Unlocking the Bible

3. David – best king

(I) TRIUMPHANT ASCENT

UP

(a) Single tribe

We see the triumphant ascent of David in the first nine chapters of 2 Samuel. It begins with a lament at the death of Saul and Jonathan, which includes some moving words remembering the warmth of the loving friendship David had known with Jonathan.

There is, however, a war developing between David’s house and Saul’s house, with tales of murder and revenge abounding. Saul’s chief commander Abner changes sides and brings Benjamin with him, but the nation is nonetheless torn apart.

(b) Settled nation

The tribe of Judah crowns David as king in Hebron in the south, where he remains for seven years. He eventually settles the nation as one unit, helped in part by the capture of Jerusalem from the hands of the Jebusites. The Jebusites are convinced that Jerusalem is safe from attack, but David takes the city by entering it via a staircase that runs from inside the city to a spring outside the walls.

It is worth noting that not only did Jerusalem have excellent fortifications for a capital city, with cliffs on three of its four sides, but it was also on ‘neutral’ territory between Judah (the tribe who supported David) and Benjamin (Saul’s tribe). It was thus an appropriate political capital as neither Judah nor Benjamin could claim it was theirs.

(c) Sizeable empire

The book proceeds to chart David’s successful campaigns against the Philistines, the Ammonites and the Edomites, whose lands became part of a vast empire. For the first (and last) time, most of the land God had promised was in Israel’s hands. Israel was at the peak of her history.

Even at such a time of personal success, however, David is keen to remember Saul’s house, and he honours Mephibosheth, the lame son of Jonathan, crippled in both feet.

(II) TRAGIC DESCENT

DOWN

(a) Disgraced man

David’s decline begins one fateful afternoon. The army is away fighting against Ammon and David, who should be leading them, is at home looking out of a palace window. He notices Bathsheba, the wife of his next-door neighbour, bathing on the roof and likes what he sees. He proceeds to break five of the Ten Commandments. He covets his neighbour’s wife, he bears false witness against the husband, he steals the wife, he commits adultery with her, and finally he arranges the murder of the husband. It is a terrible story and from that afternoon the nation goes downhill. Over the next 500 years they lose everything that God gave them.

Bathsheba becomes pregnant, David seeks to cover it up and eventually arranges for Uriah her husband to be killed in battle. The baby dies and David takes Bathsheba into the palace as his wife. She becomes pregnant again, but this baby survives and is called Solomon (meaning ‘peace’). But David has no peace. A year later God sends the prophet Nathan to David to tell him of his sin through a parable and David realizes the gravity of his sin. Psalm 51 is a prayer of confession following this revelation.

(b) Disintegrated family

It seems as if David’s immoral behaviour becomes a catalyst for unpleasantness throughout the family. His eldest son Amnon rapes Tamar, one of his sisters. David’s second son Absalom hears what happened and two years later exacts his own revenge.

Absalom gains such popularity with the people that David is obliged to leave Jerusalem. Once again he finds himself in exile.

In accordance with a prophecy made by Nathan, Absalom parades David’s wives on the palace roof and has sex with them in public. A subsequent battle leads to the death of Absalom, but David is distraught, wishing that he had died instead.

(c) Discontented people

The rancour within David’s family affects the people as a whole. Despite the vast empire they now control, they are not happy with David’s leadership. The capital is in the south and the people in the north feel neglected. Concerns are brought to a head by a Benjaminite, Sheba, who refuses to recognize David as king and starts a revolt. David quells the uprising, but the feelings of anger remain.

4. Epilogue

The last chapters are arranged using a literary device, with the contents of the epilogue set out according to corresponding themes. The structure can be broken down into six sections, labelled A1, B1, C1, C2, B2, A2, and the sections A1 and A2, B1 and B2, and C1 and C2 cover similar themes.

A1 LEGACY FROM THE PAST

The whole of Israel faces a famine for three years. God tells David that the famine is a punishment on Israel for Saul’s earlier slaughter of the Gibeonites, a group whom the Israelites had vowed not to touch. The Gibeonites request the death of seven of Saul’s descendants as recompense for this outrage and David hands them over.

B1 DAVID’S MEN

There is a short account of David’s ‘giant killers’ – the men who fought alongside him and gave him victory over the Philistines in a series of battles.

C1 DAVID’S PSALM

One of David’s greatest psalms records how God delivered him from all his enemies. He writes of God as his rock, his fortress and his deliverer – the words of a man who can look back on God’s extraordinary provision throughout his life and give thanks for it.

C2 THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID

These sayings read like a psalm as David reflects on God’s Spirit, who inspired his writing of the songs which have been sung down through the ages and are perhaps David’s greatest legacy.

B2 MORE CITATIONS FOR BRAVERY

David recognizes, records and honours the men who fought with him, including the three who crept back to Bethlehem to bring David some water when he was on the run.

A2 DIVINE JUDGEMENT AGAIN FALLS ON ISRAEL

At the end of his life, David is tempted by Satan to conduct a census of the fighting men of Israel. His motivation is pride and God punishes his action. Gad the prophet is sent to convey God’s displeasure and David has three options: three years of famine, three months of fleeing from enemies, or three days of plague. He opts for the third and 70,000 people die of the plague.

David cries out to the Lord to stop the plague and is told to sacrifice at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, a flat area high above the city of Jerusalem. He offers a sacrifice and the plague stops. David sees the threshing floor as an ideal place to build a temple for God. He is offered the land free, but David says his offering to the Lord would be unworthy if it cost him nothing and insists on buying the land. The books of Kings describe the building of the temple on this very spot.

David was not allowed to build the temple himself because God said he had ‘blood on his hands’. The temple had to be built by a man of peace. So the temple in Jerusalem, which means ‘city of peace’, was built by David’s son Solomon. Although David drew up the plans, arranged the workmen and collected the materials, it was his son Solomon who saw the project through.

How should we read Samuel?

Our overview of Samuel has so far omitted any mention of how we should read the book. All readers approach the text with certain expectations, but it is important that we read the Bible as it was intended to be read if we are to understand and interpret it correctly. Samuel is no exception. There are six different levels at which we can read any series of Bible stories and it is important to choose the right one.

1. Anecdotal (interesting stories)

(i) Children

(ii) Adults

2. Existential (personal messages)

(i) Guidance

(ii) Comfort

3. Biographical (character studies)

(i) Individual

(ii) Social

4. Historical (national development)

(i) Leadership

(ii) Structure

5. Critical (possible errors)

(i) ‘Lower’ criticism

(ii) ‘Higher’ criticism

6. Theological (providential over-ruling)

(i) Justice – retribution

(ii) Mercy – redemption

1. Anecdotal

(I) CHILDREN

The simplest way is to focus on the most interesting stories. Sunday school teachers select the events that will communicate best with the children, and the story of David and Goliath, for example, is a particular favourite.

Maria Matilda Penstone expressed it like this:

God has given us a book full of stories

which was made for his people of old.

It begins with a tale of a garden

and finishes with the city of gold.

There are stories for parents and children,

for the old who are ready to rest,

but for all who can read them or listen

the story of Jesus is best.

There is some merit in using the stories in this way, but it is selective. Teachers can easily distort the true meaning of an event in favour of a platitude which they feel is of value and on a level which they think the children will understand.

(II) ADULTS

The stories in Samuel are superbly told, with an economy of words and a beautiful style. Since adults also enjoy a good story, many read the Bible purely for its anecdotal value. Film directors have enjoyed adapting stories such as David and Bathsheba for the silver screen.

While it is good that the stories are at least read, this approach ignores one fundamental point. At the level of anecdote, it does not matter whether stories are true or not. They could be fact, fiction or fable – whatever they are, the stories can still be enjoyed and the moral message can still be discerned. The big problem is, however, that it does matter whether the stories are true or not, because these smaller stories are part of the big story of the book of Samuel, which in turn has a crucial place within the Bible’s overall story of redemption. If we doubt whether men did the things attributed to them here, how can we be sure that God did what is attributed to him in these pages? The human and the divine acts stand or fall together.

2. Existential

(I) GUIDANCE

I am tempted to call reading the stories of the Bible for guidance ‘the horoscope method’, because some people read the Bible each day hoping that something might leap out and fit them! There are rare occasions when people have testified to a particular verse or passage having played a significant role in their lives, but this says more about God’s ability to use any means he chooses to guide us than it does about the legitimacy of the method. The method completely ignores the fact that most of the verses will mean nothing to a person’s particular situation. There is a classic story about a man who was thumbing through his Bible looking for a verse and found, ‘Judas went out and hanged himself.’ Not satisfied, he looked for another and found, ‘Go and do thou likewise’!

If we are reading the Bible for a personal message, what do we make of the verse in 1 Samuel where Samuel says to Eli, ‘In your family line there will never be an old man’? It was appropriate centuries later for one of Eli’s descendants, the prophet Jeremiah, who started his prophetic ministry when he was 17 since he would not live to old age. But there is no application for us. Or take another verse ‘…and Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord.’ How would this be applied?

I am ridiculing this method because I am sure that this should not be the main reason for reading these stories. The books of Samuel will reveal relatively little if this is how we read them. We need to read the text in the context in which it is written if we are to extract the correct meaning. If we just look for texts relevant to our own situation, we will miss an enormous amount.

(II) COMFORT

In former days ‘Promise Boxes’ were used by the devout in order to find encouragement to face life. Each biblical ‘promise’ was printed on a curled up roll of paper and one was lifted out at random with a pair of tweezers each day. Needless to say, each was also lifted out of its biblical context and therefore often separated from the conditions attached to it. For example, ‘Lo, I am with you always’ is placed in the context of ‘Go and make disciples’, and we should not claim the promise if we are not fulfilling the command. Even without such a box, we can read the Bible in much the same way, looking for a verse we can lift out for ourselves. We shall find few like this in the historical books of the Bible, like Samuel and Kings. They yield up their treasures to those who read them whole, seeking to know just what God is like, how he feels about us rather than how we feel about ourselves, or even about him.

3. Biographical

(I) INDIVIDUAL

The third method is most common among preachers. One of the great features of the Bible is the honest way it records the failures and successes of the main characters. James says in the New Testament that the Bible is like a mirror that can show us what we are like through the people we read about. We can compare ourselves with Bible characters and ask whether we would have behaved in the same way.

With this in mind, we can note how the first two kings of Israel both started well and finished badly, yet Saul was seen as the worst king and David as the best.

We read of the character of Saul, a man who was literally head and shoulders above the rest, with many personal advantages. We read how the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he turned into a different man. But we read, too, of the fatal flaws in his character, and how his insecurities led to poor relationships and jealousy of the gifted people around him.

We can contrast Saul with David, whom the Bible calls ‘a man after God’s own heart’. When Samuel chooses David we read, ‘The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’

Scripture describes David as a man of the outdoors, involved in manual labour, handsome and brave. He developed his relationship with God during the lonely days and nights as a shepherd, reading the law, praying and praising God for creation as well as redemption. These years were a preparation for him to become the most important person in the land.

We can note his skills as a leader, asking God’s opinion before taking any decision. Even though he was anointed as king, he refused to take the throne too soon, but waited for God’s timing. He was a magnanimous man even in victory, unhappy when his enemies were killed and furious because one of Saul’s surviving sons was killed, even though Saul had been his enemy. He was a very forgiving man, and a man who could honour brave people – in the book of Samuel we have a list of those whom David honoured.

David was therefore the opposite of Saul: he had a heart for God and he loved honouring other people. Saul did not have a heart for God and did not like to have anyone else who was successful anywhere near him.

There are other comparisons: Samuel and Eli shared an inability to discipline their children. Jonathan and Absalom were both sons of kings but behaved very differently. Jonathan was an unselfish son of a bad king (Saul) who was willing to surrender to David’s leadership. Absalom was the selfish son of a good king (David) who wanted to seize the throne from his father.

The women in Samuel also make a lovely character study. Hannah and Abigail both reveal interesting traits. We read of Hannah’s devotion to God and her excitement when she became pregnant. Abigail courageously averted a crisis by making food for David’s men when her husband had refused them hospitality. She so impressed David that he married her shortly after her husband’s death.

(II) SOCIAL

We can also study the relationships between individuals. Jonathan and David’s friendship is one of the most pure and godly in the pages of the Bible.

The frustrating, even threatening, interaction between Saul and David is a classic example of how difficult personal relationships can be with unreliable temperaments, who alternate between welcoming and rejecting moods, especially when there is the added complication of influence by evil spirits.

The whole saga of David and the various women in his life is full of insights into gender relationships. Nor is his ability to win the affection and devotion of the various men in his life irrelevant to contemporary society.

The people’s insistent choice of their first king and their reasons for it have something to say for the influence of image on contemporary elections.

So these stories have social as well as individual implications, from all of which we can learn valuable lessons. But this still falls short of the intended message of the text.

4. Historical

(I) LEADERSHIP

A fourth way of considering Samuel is to see it as a study of the history of Israel. Israel developed from a family to a tribe, then to a nation, and finally to an empire. It is this development into an empire that is outlined in the 150 years covered by the books of Samuel.

The request for a king came from the people, jealous of the unified and visible leadership which monarchies provided in other nations around them, and fed up with the federal relationship of 12 independent tribes which pertained at that time.

Samuel warned the people that there would be heavy costs associated with any move towards a centralized government through a king. The people went ahead with their request and the course of history was set. God acceded to their request, but insisted that Israel’s king should not be like kings in other nations. Israel’s king must write out the law and read it daily, and provide spiritual leadership for the people (this provision in Deuteronomy shows that God had anticipated this development). Thereafter the character of the nation would be tied to the king.

(II) STRUCTURE

The move from a federal to a centralized structure for the nation was not painless. We can study the book from this standpoint, noting the struggles David faced and his skill in overcoming them. We can note how his genius as an organizer and his skill as a commander under God led the nation to reach a peak of peace and prosperity under his rule. His selection of Jerusalem as the capital city was one of a number of brilliant master strokes. The city was captured from the Jebusites and so was not regarded as the preserve of any particular tribe.

The empire grew under David, previous enemies became satellite states and all the land which had been promised was conquered for the first and last time. The Philistines no longer bothered them. But centralized government proved to be the Israelites’ downfall as well, for when power is in fewer and fewer hands, the character of those people who own the hands inevitably determines what happens.

5. Critical

(I) ‘LOWER’ CRITICISM

Lower criticism is the study of the Bible by scholars to see if there are any errors in the text. They study and compare manuscripts in the original languages, and note any discrepancies that may have occurred through errors of transmission by the copyists. This work gives us enormous confidence that the manuscripts which translators use are very close to the original and it is believed that the New Testament is 98 per cent accurate.

The earliest of the full Old Testament manuscripts is the Masoretic text dated at AD 900. There is a complete copy of Isaiah, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, from 100 BC which is 1,000 years older than all the other copies available. This was discovered when the Revised Standard Version was being translated, so they held back the publication until the text had been checked against this older manuscript. In fact, the text they had been working on originally was very accurate and only a few things needed to be changed.

Whilst the Old Testament text does not have the same accuracy as the New Testament, we can still be assured that there is very little which is different from the original text. Furthermore, it is worth noting that any dilemmas regarding translation are on small details and not the central truths of the faith. In Samuel, for example, there are two accounts of the death of Goliath, but only one makes David responsible. If just one letter is adjusted, the discrepancy is solved. Clearly a copyist made an error in transmission.

(II) ‘HIGHER’ CRITICISM

Lower criticism is a necessary and welcome discipline, but higher criticism does a great deal of damage. It came originally from Germany in the nineteenth century and filtered into many theological colleges during the twentieth century.

The basic argument of higher criticism is that even if the original text accurately conveys what the writer meant, we can still be mistaken about what we should believe. The higher critics approach the text with their own presuppositions based on what they regard as reasonable. Those who argue that science has disproved miracles omit any miraculous events from the text, while those who cannot believe in supernatural foreknowledge omit any prophecy that accurately predicts the future.

These scholars work at a purely academic and intellectual level, with little concern for or understanding of personal faith. Their approach unavoidably leaves the text of Scripture in pieces, unrecognizable from the original.

6. Theological

A theological approach to reading the books of the Bible makes every page and every sentence of value. The levels of reading we have considered so far are concerned only with the human side of Bible study, but the Bible is primarily a book about God, with only a secondary interest in God’s people. This type of study asks how we can read the text in order to get to know God.

We have already seen how Samuel is a prophetic book. The history recorded is history from God’s perspective, recording what God believed to be important.

Taking the theological approach, therefore, we can look at a story and ask how this event related to God. How did he feel about it? Why did the event matter so much to God that it was included for us to read as part of Holy Scripture? We start to read the book from God’s point of view and draw conclusions about who he is and what he is like. Confident that God does not change, we can then apply these timeless truths to our own day and generation.

JUSTICE AND MERCY

This is the best and most exciting way to read Samuel. The book describes God’s intervention in the life of Israel, for he is the real actor in these stories, not Saul, David or Samuel. God both initiates historical events and responds to them. We see how Hannah is barren, she prays, and God gives her a son. We see how David, in God’s name, kills Goliath with his first stone. We see how David, with God’s help, escapes the clutches of thousands of men from Saul’s army. God helps some folk and hinders others. He is just in punishing evil and sometimes merciful in not punishing when punishment is deserved.

He gives Israel the land, but when they disobey him he sends oppressors. When they repent he sends deliverers. He allows the people to choose a king, but when the king fails he gives them another, one after his own heart.

We can study the stories of Samuel, learn lessons from the history and compare ourselves with Saul or David, but the real reason to read the book is to learn about the character of God.

God’s activity is seen especially at the heart of the book. He makes a covenant with David, confirming his commitment to Israel which had first been expressed in the covenants with Abraham and Moses centuries before. This is the most vital moment in 1 and 2 Samuel. It arises when David asks God if he can build a house for him. He is embarrassed that he has built such a grand palace for himself and that God is living in a tent next door.

When David tells God he will build him a house, three messages come from the prophet Nathan. The first message is, ‘Do it.’ The second message is, ‘Don’t do it.’ God explains that a tent is good enough for him since he never asked for a palace of stone. The third message is that David must not build the temple because he is ‘a man of blood’, but his son can build it.

In the covenant God tells David how he will treat his son. He will discipline him but will never cease to love him. David’s house and kingdom will endure before him for ever. His throne will be established for ever; there will always be a descendant of David on the throne.