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 because I had never considered a number to have meaning beyond the numerical value that they indicate. It’s kind when letters have colors, which mine do, so I understand that a bit better. TB also said that around this time, or a little after like when the book of Samuel was recorded, the age of 30 was when a man was considered old enough to be a rabbi, which is probably why Jesus was 30 years old when his ministry began. Seems like an odd year to us, especially considering how young some of our ancient and modern prophets were, but according to the culture he lived in at the time, 30 years of age was it. So in line with that, David starting his kingship over the entirety of Israel at 30 years of age makes sense. Additionally, 40 years was considered an entire generation, so while it might have been 40 calendar years give or take, the whole point of saying that he reigned 40 years was to say that he was king for an entire generation.

Hebron might have been where David was anointed king, but it wasn’t where he was going to stay. Now that he was king over both territories, he decided to take his family and his men and find a more centrally located permanent residence. He chose Jerusalem to be that new place, but TB maintains that this wasn’t yet meant to be the big city that it turned out to be, initially it was just meant to be David’s personal, private estate along with his harem. The IM notes that Jerusalem was perfectly situated between the northern tribes of Israel and the southern tribes of Judah & Benjamin, which was part of the reason why it was chosen. The main problem was that it was currently occupied by Jebusites, or a random Canaanite tribe. TB spent almost an hour teaching about the history of Jerusalem but I don’t really want to get that far into it. It is supposedly the city where Melchizedek lived and had been in control of the Canaanites for the previous 1,000 years.

David takes his personal army to capture the city, because this was going to be his personal estate, he didn’t want to ask the Israelite army to fight that battle for him. The people who lived in Jerusalem weren’t scared of David and there’s some back and forth about blind and lame people, which TB spends a lot of time on but I don’t want to. Suffice it to say that they weren’t scared of him and he took that city anyway. He called it the city of David and started growing it even with the help of a king named Hiram from Tyre who sent David cedar wood, carpenters, and masons to help with building the cities. David also took more wives and concubines and had a lot more children, and oldest boys which are named in these verses.