Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

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...

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 ...

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’...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The Philistines are preparing to battle the Israelites, and chapter 29 is kind of snapshot of what the Philistines are doing while Saul was busy consulting the witch. Apparently there are 5 kings of the Philistines and one of them is Achish, the king in charge where David is living and the one he’s been paying tribute to when he raids and destroys all the surrounding cities. The other 4 kings have gathered with their men when Achish shows up with David is his 600 soldiers bringing up the rear. This makes the other 4 princes very uncomfortable and they tell Achish that David can’t fight with them. This makes sense from their perspective because it’s very likely that, in their mind, that this substantial number of defected enemy soldiers could just as easily turned on them in the heat of battle and killed their Philistine soldiers. We have native fighters with us a lot of the times, the Iraqi army and the Afghan national army most recently, but there were instances of those “allies” betr...

We know that David was living among the Philistines for about 16 months, and that at some point, the Philistines started to prepare for war against Israel. The king of Gath came to David and asked is David and his men would fight with him against Israel. This is a tough spot for David because Israel is his home and his people, but he was living with the Philistines to stay alive. David’s answer is, “Surely thou shalt know what thy servant can do.” I have no idea what that means, but TB says that it’s the ultimate politician answer because it means exactly what anyone wants it to mean. The king was so moved that he made David his personal body guard “forever.” On the other hand, Saul knows that he’s in trouble because the Philistines gathered against Israel and Israel gathered against the Philistines. He desperately wants comfort and an assurance that Israel will prevail here, but he’s so spiritual dead that he can’t get an answer from God “neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by proph...

Even though Saul said that David could come home and be safe, he didn’t believe him, plus he had an army of 600 men to take care of and if he’d shown back up at home with that army, Saul would have had a problem with that. Deciding that he can’t be safe anywhere in Israel’s territory, David takes his army and heads to Gath, which is the same place that he was at before when he went alone and had to pretend to be crazy to escape with his life, the difference this time though is that he now has an army with him. Whether or not this army was big enough to conquer the city of Gath, I’m not sure, but it was big enough to either pose a major threat or be a great asset. David is hoping that the king of Gath will see it as an asset, which he does but with some apprehension. Having a huge army in the main city would have not only been a problem for the resources of that city, but that army wasn’t loyal to that king, they were loyal to David so it probably made the king nervous to have them arou...

The whole incident with Nabal might have been widely known to the general public because we again see the people who live in Ziph going to Saul and telling him that they know where David is hiding. Even though Saul said he’s stop pursuing David because David spared his life, that was a lie and Saul is grateful to the Ziphites and take off with this 3,000 men to find David. Let’s note the size difference in parties, Saul’s 3,000 warriors against David’s 600 randoms. David hears that Saul is looking for him again and sends out spies to find out what’s going on. The spies find Saul and David takes his men and goes to where Saul is. I think it’s an interesting strategy that he went to Saul instead of retreating to somewhere safe. It makes sense if you know where your enemy is but they don’t know exactly where you are, definitely have the upper hand in that instance. They see Saul and his men laid out, it says “in the trench” and “trench” is cross-referenced to say barricade, I thought it w...

It just so happens that Abigail took the exact route to run into David before he gets to her house with his 400 men and the kill everyone, and when she gets to him, she gets off her donkey and falls on to her face on the ground and tells him that this whole misunderstanding is her fault. We all know that this is not true, this is Nabal’s fault and everyone knows this, but she says put the blame on her. This is a Christlike action because he also wasn’t guilty but took our blame. It’s interesting to consider that at some point, we are all Nabal, stubborn, mean, prideful, at least I know that I have been and still am in a lot of ways. We are Nabal, and Abigail is Christ, who takes the blame on herself to save us from ourselves. David is surprised by he actions because like we talked about yesterday, this is a wealthy, aristocratic woman who is now face down in the dirt, humiliating herself, begging him to reconsider. That’s probably why he listened, because she was addressing him, which ...

Because David feels highly disrespected, he takes 2/3 of his men, 400 men, and heads towards Nabal’s house to kill every male. David is talking to himself the whole way, essentially justifying what he’s about to do. TB comments on it, and when I heard it I was stopped because it spoke to me clearly because I do this and it’s very self-destructive to me. TB says, “David essentially muttering to himself as he is traveling, complaining about how he and his men guarded this man’s property, and did such a good job, and still this man repays their efforts with an insult! And truly that is the mental picture we need to get; a very upset David who feels that he has been cheated; a man who is roiling this over in his mind, replaying his anger again and again. A modern psychologist might say he is playing those negative tapes in his head and he won’t turn them off. And truly, just as for us in our time, this was David sort of enjoying being mad and not particularly anxious to let it go and move ...

Here we start to see the first cracks in David’s spiritual armor. First thing in chapter 25 is that Samuel dies, but David doesn’t go to the burial. TB notes that with Samuel’s death, the rift between David and Saul became permanent, saying, “Samuel was a transformational character who also bridged the divide of loyalties among the various tribal coalitions. There was no other single man since Joshua’s death who help the respect of all 12 tribes and whose authority was honored by all Israel. Even Saul feared him.” One thought I had when I heard TB say this was that Samuel was the “transformational character” that took the entirety of Hebrew society, with all their tribes and clans and divided loyalties, and united them under a single king, Saul and then started with David. Even though we read about it in hindsight 3,000 years later, that task must have been enormous, and I think about Samuel’s life and his relationship with his mother and how sad that must have been for them to not be ...