Bible in A Year: Episode 12

Intro: Welcome to Read the Bible in a Year with Matt and Hannah, a weekly podcast from Fairfax Bible Church where we explore scripture together, uncover new themes and design patterns. We’re glad you’re here. Now, here are your hosts, Matt and Hannah. 

Matt: Okay, it is episode 12, so, Hannah, I have to share a little something with you.

Hannah: Okay.

Matt: So I wanted there to be like, sort of a, like, signature intro when I open this. I don’t know, you might know about me. Other people may not know about me. I was actually a radio guy when I first got out of college. I majored in journalism at Syracuse, so I wanted to be a radio guy. And always my favorite radio shows had a standard intro when they would open, and I haven’t landed on one for this podcast yet. Episode 12, Read the Bible near with Matt and Hannah. I’m Matt, she’s Hannah. I’ve come up with some version of this, but then I noticed hip hop artists like to open their songs with a microphone check. Oh, no. I don’t know how much you listen to hip hop, especially old school hip hop.

Hannah: Yeah, it depends on the day.

Matt: Okay. I was listening to A Tribe Called Quest lately, and one of their tracks, they open with microphone check. One, two. What is this?

Hannah: Oh, is that how we’re gonna start our podcast?

Matt: I don’t see my thing as. I don’t. I think it’s cool, but I don’t think I can pull it off.

Hannah: Yeah, I guess we’d have to come up with our own. Yeah, you can’t just steal someone else’s.

Matt: Well, no talent steals or genius steals. Talent borrows. So there’s no shame in stealing something. I just. I don’t think I can pull it off. Maybe you should try it. Maybe next time we’ll have you see. Do a little check one, check two, check three. Something like that. Okay.

Hannah: Okay. We’ll think about it. At least we have Kyle as our consistent intro.

Matt: That’s true. I mean, he has a cooler voice than I do.

Hannah: Yeah, he’s got a radio voice.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. By the way, people may not know this about Kyle. Kyle actually does a podcast. He does a baseball podcast called the Three Zero Take. You don’t care because you don’t care about baseball. But it’s a legit podcast. People should listen to it. It’s really fun. Anyway, welcome, friends. We’re reading the Bible and it’s a joy, and it’s so fun. We had such a great conversation last week. We are cruising our way through. I know we had a lot going on last time there. I Don’t know if there’s more going on, but we’re not slowing down. We have not hit a resting point.

Hannah: Right.

Matt: Things are really amping up here. So we are firmly in the story of David, who’s super important and super interesting. A lot of good stuff. So a lot to talk about today, and it’s. It’s fun because a lot of this gives us a chance to talk about Jesus too. So that is exciting. So why don’t you set it up for us? What’s the story so far?

Hannah: Yeah. Okay, so this week, we covered 1st Samuel 25 through 2nd Samuel 18. So last week, when we started 1st Samuel, we were introduced to a whole bunch of characters, including Samuel the prophet Saul as the first king in Israel, and David, who was anointed king, but as of last week, had not officially taken the throne. And so we see that Saul, as Israel’s first king, ends pretty poorly. He fails many times, and at the same time, David was anointed as king, and he seems to be the kind of king that Israel really needs. So he listens to the voice of the Lord. He trusts God’s wisdom. He even crushed the head of the snake like figure of Goliath.

Matt: Maybe some more on that today.

Hannah: Yes, but then towards the end of last week’s reading, he was on the run from Saul for a very long time, and he spares Saul’s life. So this week we saw more of David’s character development. And so at the. I think, beginning. Yeah, beginning of this week, Saul and his sons die in battle, leaving the throne open. And so that brings us to two Samuel. And we would expect David to be glad or relieved by Saul’s death, but instead, he grieves, which reveals his humility, his compassion for the Lord’s anointed leader. So after that, the kingdom was divided because Saul’s son, Ish Bosheth.

Matt: Oh, that was really good.

Hannah: Wow, that one’s a hard name. You know, names are crazy.

Matt: You did great.

Hannah: So Ish Bosheth, he was anointed as king over all of the tribes, except for the tribe of Judah, which takes David as their king. And eventually Ishbosheth is killed. And so David, the. The tribes are all united in one kingdom. David wants to build a temple for the Lord, but God declines, and instead he promises David that a future king will come from his royal bloodline who will build God’s temple on earth and set up an eternal kingdom. And this future king is the messianic promise. He’s connected to God’s Promise to bless all nations through

Abraham’s family. Something else that we see in these stories is that David starts to accumulate wives, which goes against the garden vision.

Matt: You shouldn’t be doing that, David.

Hannah: Yeah. And it goes against explicitly a law in the Torah for expectations for a king to not take many wives. And then we see his major Genesis three, like failure with Bathsheba, and then he tries to cover it up by murdering her husband. Um, he does own up to his failure pretty quickly, but he does have to live with the consequences of his own actions. So this includes the death of his first son with Bathsheba and then this whole situation with his son Absalom, who launches a rebellion against him with an attempt to seize power from his father. So David is on the run again, and this time from his own son. Absalom does a bunch of terrible things. He sleeps with David’s wives, and then he plans an attack, musters up the whole army of Israel. But David learns of his plan. He’s able to defeat Absalom’s army. Absalom is killed. And then again, David mourns the death of someone who sought to kill him. And so, all in all, while David is still God’s chosen king, he now is living inside the consequences of his failures.

Matt: It is quite the ark.

Hannah: Yeah. There’s so much that happens in these chapters.

Matt: And in the meantime, he’s writing almost the whole book of Psalms.

Hannah: Yeah, yeah. Which is really cool. We read several of them this week that are explicitly about a lot of these stories that are happening.

Matt: Yeah. So David’s one of those interesting characters because you don’t just see what happens to him through the narrative. You get a sense of what his inner life was like, what his prayer life was like, and his thought life was like, because we see those expressed in the Psalms. So that’s really, really cool. Yeah, that’s a cool part of reading the Bible. Well, let’s. Let’s get into things a little bit. So we want to clean up a little bit from the Saul story. When we left things last time, David, you know, the Lord had rejected Saul as king and made it clear that David was going to be the king. And you could see a narrative where David’s like, okay, well, I’m just going to take over now, and though we’ll have a civil war, and, you know, I’m just going to defeat Saul, because that’s God planned. But that is not how David reacts. David waits. In fact, when people want to sort of instigate things, he makes a point to say, I. I will not. My hand will not strike the Lord’s anointed. It’s remarkably patient of him. I think we did a quick research. I think historians or Bible commentators estimate somewhere around seven, maybe 10 years that David was on the run from Saul, waiting for the Lord to deliver the kingdom to him. That’s. That’s really interesting. It’s really patient. It says a lot about David, but it’s really interesting. What do. What do we make of this? Why do you think God may have waited so long to have David assume this office? He’s clearly done with Saul. Why wait so long? You have any thoughts on that?

Hannah: That’s a good question. Yeah. I mean, David has the chance to kill Saul, right?

Matt: I think at least. At least twice. Yeah.

Hannah: Twice.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: Yeah. And. And he doesn’t. Like you said, he didn’t want to lay his hands on the Lord’s anointed. Then he. He trusts the Lord like he’s trusting the Lord’s timing. I don’t know. We don’t know why God, you know, times things the way that he does, but he does ask us to trust his timing and trust his wisdom. So that’s definitely something that we see in David’s character here.

Matt: Yeah. Something I noticed or something I picked up this time. And you can tell me if I’m off, though, a little bit of the inversion of the Genesis 3 pattern. Because David sees, but he doesn’t take. He waits for God to make it clear when it’s time. So rather than that see desire, take pattern that we saw Saul even be involved in earlier, David’s sort of an inverse of that. He sees, but he doesn’t take. He trusts that God’s going to provide to him when the time is right.

Hannah: Yeah. Yeah. He doesn’t take the throne or power for himself. He doesn’t take Saul’s life. Yeah, totally.

Matt: Yeah. You know, it’s so funny because, you know, I have a situation right now, a family thing. And I won’t belabor this, but a lot of it is. There is clearly a right outcome. There is clearly a right thing that should be done here. And, you know, we’ve certainly been praying as a family, and our small group’s been praying for us. And, you know, I’d estimate that many people who are praying about this or listening to this have been praying for us. And thank you. But there is a little bit of. You pray and you pray and you pray, and then you just gotta wait. You just gotta wait for the Lord to do what he’s gonna do. And you know Tom Petty’s song, the Waiting is the Hardest

Part? So I think about that all the time, though. It’s waiting. And I struggle when I have to wait, like a couple weeks for something that I’m praying for. David waits seven years, maybe even 10 years.

Hannah: Yeah. Wow.

Matt: And then I really love your observation that we see at least three times where David has a declared enemy, somebody who wants to kill him or at least wants to defeat him. And when that enemy is defeated and dies, David’s response is to grieve.

Hannah: Yeah. Yeah. So we saw that in the first chapter of Second Samuel, once David learns that Saul and his sons were killed, he grieves. You know, he did love Saul’s son Jonathan, so it makes sense that he grieves for him, but he grieves for Saul. You know, and Saul was his arch nemesis, you know, his greatest enemy, who is seeking to kill him. So. Yeah. And even the messenger that brings him that news is kind of like expecting. He’s kind of expecting David to gloat.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: Saul’s death. Yeah. And then the other times when he does that is Saul’s son, Ishmacheth. When he dies, you know, he’s a rival king who’s, you know, been anointed king over all the tribes other than Judah. And whoever goes out to kill him, David’s like, why did you do that? And he mourns over that. And then third is his own son, Absalom, who tries to take the kingdom over from him, and he mourns his death.

Matt: Yeah. And that one you get a little bit of context for. Because that’s his son.

Hannah: It’s his son.

Matt: Yeah. A father to a son is a special kind of grief. But even, I mean, Absalom’s a terrible son, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it’s really, really interesting. You know, it sort of. It’s a little bit of a flash forward in my mind, you know, in the New Testament, especially Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. You know, for all the talk about, like, the Old Testament, God is maybe different than the New Testament God. I don’t think so. I mean, obviously we know that to. To be true, but, like, here it is where Jesus says, love your enemies. I wonder if he’s thinking about David. David loved people who were declared enemies of his who wanted harm to him, wanted to kill him. And David loves them to the point where he’s grieving and fasting and even getting vengeance on his enemies when they are defeated. When the messenger comes and he’s bragging about this and you get a little hint that the messenger thinks he’s going to be rewarded. And David says, you think this is going to. David has him slaughtered. David has him executed for this. So. Yeah, it’s a striking response.

Hannah: Yeah, yeah. He has multiple. He has the messenger who tells him that Saul died. He has him killed.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: Just for delivering the message.

Matt: Well, it turns out that he had delivered the sort of fatal blow. Yeah. Saul was probably already mortally wounded, but the. The messenger brags about delivering the fatal blow.

Hannah: Right.

Matt: And David turns him away for that. And. And yes, executes. Has him executed.

Hannah: Yeah, yeah. And he does the same thing with. Are there two people that kill Ishmacheth? I think, yeah, there might be two of them.

Matt: And he has them execut. Yeah. It’s like a conspiracy thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a remarkable demonstration of character and one that I’m not sure I would have myself. Yeah, yeah. So. So, so, yeah. I mean, I could noodle on that for a little bit, but it’s. I just think it’s really interesting response and I hadn’t thought about it much until you pointed out to me, so. So thank you, Hannah. Yeah. Yet another reason, yet another benefit you. You provide to me. So. Yes. So David finally assumes the throne and Saul is off the scene. His son is off the scene. There’s a relative. It’s short in the text, but it tells us the years of warfare are about seven years or so. So another seven years waiting for the full kingdom to come into it. But there’s a short war between David’s followers in the house of Judah and then the rest of Israel. And then that concludes. And then there’s this scene. David makes a power move here. I’m not super up to date. Ancient Israel political practices.

Hannah: This.

Matt: This feels very Game of Thrones to me. And I never watched Game of Thrones. If other people do, they can tell me if I’m wrong here, but it feels like that sort of medieval power play kind of thing because one of his terms of assuming the throne is he wants Michael to come back and do his household. And Michael, remind me who Michael is.

Hannah: The. Saul’s daughter.

Matt: Okay. And that was. That would have been his first wife. Right.

Hannah: Well, I don’t. They were engaged for sure. Which maybe is just as good as being a wife in those times. Yeah. But then Saul took her back and gave her to a different man t

o be his wife. So. Yeah. Then David, there’s this guy named Abner who is, I think, like the chief of Saul’s army after Saul is dead. And he decides, actually, I don’t want to be part of this side. I’m going to go partner with David.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: And he wants to make a covenant with David. And David says, sure, we’ll do that, as long as you get me Michael back.

Matt: Wow.

Hannah: Yeah.

Matt: So that’s so cold.

Hannah: Yeah, that’s.

Matt: That’s a cold move, right?

Hannah: Just blatantly taking somebody else’s wife.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: And it uses that word, take. Take her from her husband, you know, that we see from Genesis 3. Yeah. He sees what he wants and he takes it. Yeah. Which is not looking good. David’s been pretty good so far. And that’s the first glimpse where you’re like, oh, yeah, this is not going very well.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: I think it foreshadows his greater failure with Bathsheba.

Matt: Yeah. And so as part of the bringing the kingdom together, he decides the capital is going to be at Jerusalem. So that elevated city sort of in the middle area of Israel there. And, and so he has. He wants to move the Ark of the Covenant. And, and so when he does that, he. It’s a big party, like, and, and like, the script text tells us that, like, he’s throwing down. He’s, like, dancing. He’s, like, stripped down to his underwear and dancing. And I don’t know if you saw, my wife Christy had a comment about this. Did you see this?

Hannah: Oh, yeah, I liked it already. I put a heart on it.

Matt: Okay, so Chrissy wants there to be some, like, old YouTube footage of this that she could look at.

Hannah: I, I. Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on. So this is in chapter six, where they’re. Yeah. Bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. And it says, david danced with all his might. Like, what a. How. What does that look like? Yeah. To dance with all your might. That’s so funny.

Matt: I mean, my imagination is going places.

Hannah: Yeah, well, and you said something about being stripped down to his underwear. The text doesn’t say that, but it says that his wife, Michael, was embarrassed. She despised him because of the way he was danc. Dancing.

Matt: Okay.

Hannah: And says something about, like, why were you exposing yourself to these other. The servants of Saul or someone like that? So I don’t know. We don’t know 100% what’s going on there. But she clearly cares about his public image and he doesn’t. He’s like, I’m worshiping the Lord.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: I don’t Care what I look like. Or he can’t be dishonored from looking silly. Or if. I don’t know, if he danced so hard, he exposed himself. Like what? I don’t know.

Matt: I mean, you know, if you’re dancing pretty hard, it can get pretty warm. Right. It’s got too many layers on.

Hannah: Yeah. But I don’t know what an image of worship. Like, he didn’t care what he looked like. He didn’t care if he looked silly or dishonored himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The greatest honor is to worship the Lord, not. You know, he can’t be dishonored by doing that.

Matt: Well, he even says I’m ready. He says, I will make myself even more contemptible than this.

Hannah: Yeah.

Matt: I will be abused in your eyes. Like he’s. Yeah. Michael’s opinion is not a factor here. He’s not worried about what she thinks.

Hannah: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt: Now all that is to say, next time you come to worship at Fairfax Bible Church, everybody keep your stuff on. Okay.

Hannah: But we know that hang wants to see everyone dancing with their whole might. That would be great.

Matt: Okay. Okay. I’m struggling a little bit with this one, but.

Hannah: Yeah, yeah.

Matt: But no, good for David. It’s exciting. Yes. It’s just hard for me to imagine, like, people dancing in the aisles at our church.

Hannah: Yeah. It’s. We’re not really charismatic enough for that.

Matt: No. And. And you and I especially are no more sort of conservative, reserved people. So. Yeah. So don’t expect. Matt.

Hannah: Yeah. You won’t see me dancing.

Matt: Not probably gonna happen. But the rest of you, you know. Hey, let’s see what you got. So. So David comes into Jerusalem. He makes it in it. Yeah. It seems like it’s going well. And there’s some scenes, some text about he wins a whole bunch of battles. Yay. That’s awesome. But that’s this beautiful scene where he decides that the. The. The. The Lord has been in the tabernacle, the tent, for too long. He wants to build a permanent house for God. And God’s response is, no, I don’t need that. Thank you. I hear you. Appreciate that. But you’re not going to build a house for me. I’m gonna build you into a house. So, A, what does that mean, Hannah? And then B, what’s sort of the significance? What’s happening here?

Hannah: Y

eah. He said the Lord, you know, sends the prophet Nathan to deliver this message. He says that he is going to make a house for David. Instead. He promises to raise up a king from his line and will establish that offspring’s kingdom forever. So this is all messianic language. You know, this is the promise that God gave to Abraham that a seed would come from him to restore the blessing back to all nations. And the, the cool thing is the way that David responds to in this is chapter 7, verse 25 and 26. He says, do as you have promised so that your name will be exalted forever. So he is. He could gloat or brag like, oh, the Lord’s going to establish my kingdom forever. Like, I must be great. Yeah, you could easily puff up your pride with that. But he is like, okay, the purpose of this is so that the Lord’s name will be exalted forever. So this is all, you know, good, good stuff for David’s character. And he does seem like the king that Israel really needs. And. But we see that he is not the true king because God is establishing this Messiah that’s going to come from his royal line. So there is another who’s going to come and be even better and perfect.

Matt: So I want to pull up here just to make sure people are tracing the thread a little bit. So this, this promise where God’s going to bless and his plan to sort of rescue humanity from their sin problem, moral failure, defining good and evil for themselves. The first thing we find out is right in the aftermath of the fall, that it’s going to be the seed of a woman. So it’s going to be a human. He’s going to crush the head of the snake. And we’ve seen some allusions to that a couple times. Then we find out he’s going to put that into this person, Abraham. So it’s going to be part of the family of Abraham. And then Abraham grows into this nation of tribes, and then it’s going to be in this one tribe, Judah. And then it gets even more specific than there. It’s not just going to be the tribe of Judah that’s anointed. It’s going to be this, this man and his offspring, the kingdom. So, David. So it started out big of potentially all humanity. It’s gotten narrower, narrow, that this is where the promised rescue is going to come from. This King David. We know, again, we’ve talked a little bit about reading genealogies and sort of the power that can be in them when Matthew and Luke come on the scene, especially, I think, especially Matthew, Matthew makes a point to write his genealogy to make sure that this thread is like, really, really evident that Jesus is not just somebody who shows up claiming to be a king. But that if you’re looking at the air. Airhood. That’s not a word. The, the progression. Words aren’t my thing. The Jesus is the rightful king. If you’re just doing it from lineage, like, Jesus would have every right to claim kingdom because he is from the line of David.

Hannah: So, yeah, yeah. David is hugely emphasized in this messianic line. And like you mentioned Matthew’s genealogy. One really cool thing is that Hebrew letters can also represent numbers.

Matt: Okay.

Hannah: And the name David can also look like the number 14.

Matt: Okay.

Hannah: And so there are. In Matthew’s genealogy. I should have looked. There’s either two or three sets of 14 names.

Matt: Oh, yeah.

Hannah: I don’t remember if it’s two or three, but okay. It’s all like. And. And you know, David is central in there, so he’s really high. Extra, extra. Highlighting the importance of Jesus is really from the line of David.

Matt: That is super nerdy and I love it. Yeah.

Hannah: Someone out there is going to appreciate that.

Matt: Oh, well, I do. I totally do. Yeah. So David’s importance in the story cannot be overstated. And yet, as we saw a little bit last week, you know, because the. The text gives us a hint, maybe David is this guy because there’s that snake crusher language and he’s defeating Israel’s enemies and, you know, he’s. He’s sort of inversing the pattern. We see him waiting on God, but I think it becomes clear, and it’s going to become super duper clear in just a minute here. David’s not the guy. As awesome as he is and as wonderful and important as he is, he’s not the guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So though it’s right about here where the story starts to take a turn. So in. Where is it? It’s chapter 11.

Hannah: Yeah.

Matt: So chapter. Well, even before that, chapter 10, because I want to back up a little bit here. So chapter 10, in second Samuel, David is king. There’s a neighboring king. I think it’s the Ammonites. The king of the Ammonites died. David had known him ensemble. And so he sends a party to mourn and pay tribute. And the new king thinks that something is up and David is maybe trying to spy on him or commit some espionage or something like that. And he does this horrible thing. He. David’s diplomatic party. He captures them and he makes them shave half their beards, which I even.

I can understand. That’s very insulting. I mean, I don’t have. I’m not much for facial hair, but if somebody is like, you got to Shave off half your beard. I get that this is meant as an insult. And so they go back and David finds out about this. And David’s response basically is to go to war. And so then it’s the next chapter. That chapter starts with in the spring when kings typically go to war, David stayed behind in Jerusalem. And then something very, very bad happens. Yeah, yeah. So walk us through this part.

Hannah: Yeah, so, so start just starting very early off. In verse two, we see a lot of language that should pique our interest. So it says that David saw a woman bathing. And it specifies that she is a beautiful woman.

Matt: Does it say Tov?

Hannah: Yes, it does. Oh, look at me. If you could guess what word is behind that word. Yeah, it says that she was very tove.

Matt: Oh, wow.

Hannah: Yep. So he sent messengers to take her for him. So we’ve got all the keywords from Genesis 3 there. Yep. So he takes her into the palace, he sleeps with her, she becomes pregnant. And then David sends for her husband Uriah to come home from the battle, hoping that he will sleep with her. So it looks like she got pregnant from her husband. But in his integrity, he does not go inside and sleep inside the home because he’s like, well, my fellow troops are out sleeping in the tents, so I, I wouldn’t want to, you know, dishonor them that way. Like, what a great guy.

Matt: It’s a pretty stand up move.

Hannah: Yeah, yeah. And so that plan doesn’t work. And so then David instructs the commander of his army to put Uriah at the front of the battle line. So he dies in battle. And then David has Bathsheba brought into his house to become his wife. So he marries her quickly. So it looks like she got pregnant while they were married.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: And actually what’s interesting in this chapter is that the text explicitly says that the Lord considered what David had done to be evil in verse 27. And we don’t always get that type of explicit moral commentary on characters actions. But the narrator here is like, I really need you to know how terrible this was. If you didn’t see the Genesis 3 language, like, this was really evil. Yeah, yeah. So then when we get to the Next chapter, chapter 12 is when Nathan the Lord sends Nathan the prophet to David to tell this parable that points out David’s failure in sin. And what, what is, you know, good at the end of this is that David immediately responds, I have sinned against the Lord. And he recognizes what he’s done and repents for that. But the Lord specifically says verse 13:14 that the Lord has forgiven your sin, so you won’t die, but you will have to live with the consequences of your actions. And so the son that is going to be born from Bathsheba is going to die. And that’s one of the, you know, primary immediate consequences from. From that action.

Matt: Oh, it’s very sad.

Hannah: Yeah.

Matt: So history tells us is that this is when David wrote what we know as Psalm 51. And so every time I read that psalm, I think about this story, and David starts at that psalm. Have mercy on me, oh God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my iniquities, wash away my sin, for I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. And then he says this thing that’s so interesting. He says, against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you are proved right and justified when you judge. And I’m like. Every time I read that, I was like, I think there were other people involved, David. I think he may have sinned against a couple other people here. But, you know, the text says, against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight? It makes me pause every time I read that.

Hannah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the people that he sinned against are made in God’s image. So, yeah, when we sin against other people, we are primarily sinning against God.

Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s hard to get my brain around sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there’s one thing I want to go back to. I do want to talk about the consequences a little bit, but there’s one thing I want to go back to. I. Something that sort of popped for me maybe a couple years ago is I’m not sure David should have even been in position to even see Bathsheba in the first place. You know, I’m thinking about this in chapter 10, the story with the Ammonites that, you know, that response now, obviously, the response that the Ammonites have to David, sending tribute. That’s terrible. I get why he’s insulted by that, but I’m just wondering, like, it feels, you know, something I started learning about a couple years ago is this idea of honor and shame as a cultural factor. I feel like you would know more about this than I would. This is not something I paid a

lot of attention to up until a few years ago. But this idea that especially in matters of, like, family issues, everything I do either brings honor to my family or shame to my family. And so the highest thing you can do is bring honor. The lowest thing you can do to bring shame, and it invokes scorekeeping. So if you honor me, I in turn honor you. If you bring shame to me, then I bring shame back to you. And so it’s part of that whole spiraling of the human condition that we see. And I wonder, it strikes me that David’s response there is sort of based in honor shame. Because his diplomatic corps, his, his, his troops have been shamed. David decides to respond with sort of a shame based response and escalates the war. And I don’t know that he had to do that. Like, I get it, I get that he was insulted and wants to respond, but I wonder if he might have been, if he had just maybe absorbed the offense. That is one possibility. Or if he had just said like a, sent a diplomat and say, I think we have a misunderstanding here. Can we, can we talk a little bit? I wonder if he had done something like that, then maybe the war doesn’t even start.

Hannah: Yeah.

Matt: And then maybe he’s not in even position to see Bathsheba. Right.

Hannah: I don’t know enough about how ancient Near Eastern wars worked, if that was an option. I don’t know. But certainly he should not have stayed home. Even if he started this war. He should be out with his, with his armies for sure. Shouldn’t have been at home.

Matt: Yeah, yeah. So part of the tragedy of the whole Bathsheba incident. He should not have even been there in the first place. The war maybe should not have even started in the first place. He should not have been there in the first place. It would have been appropriate for him to be with his troops. And so because he’s either, you know, in one version, he’s chosen the honor shame approach that he didn’t need to, but certainly the text gives us indication that he’s not fulfilling his responsibility. And so then he, he sees her and nothing in Israel is ever the same.

Hannah: Yeah.

Matt: And then you pointed out something. Bathsheba is what number wife?

Hannah: I think she’s the eighth. Yeah, yeah. Because there are six of his sons are listed out earlier in the chapters and it’s one. A different wife for each of those six sons. And then he takes Michael back. That’s a seventh. And then Bathsheba would be the eighth.

Matt: Honestly, one is all I can keep up with. I don’t know how people deal with more than one wife. That’s a lot of wives. I guess there’s some political like kingdom building with it. That’s hard for me to understand, but. Yeah, yeah, but. But even Torah says, don’t be collecting

Hannah: wipes specifically for kings. Yeah. Is what. What the Torah says. Obviously, we know the vision from the garden is Adam and Eve are joined as one flesh. And the first person who collects more than one wife is Lamech. In. I think it’s Genesis 4.

Matt: I think so. Bad dude.

Hannah: Yep. And there’s. He gloats and how violent he is. And he, Very early on in Genesis is the archetype of that downward spiral that has happened because of the fall. So for him to be the first person to collect multiple wives is definitely the text condemning that sort of behavior. Yeah.

Matt: And so here’s David doing the same thing, you know, collecting wives and causes a problem. So one of the aftermaths of David’s sin with Bathsheb, which. Bathsheba. Well, actually, I don’t even want to skip over her because she proves to be a very interesting character. Like, we’re gonna see, I think, a little bit next week. But. But, you know, the. The son that she has later with David, Solomon, who we’ll learn more about as we keep going here. But the sort of maneuvering to make sure that he is able to go to the throne. She’s an interesting player in that. She’s a sharp lady.

Hannah: Yeah.

Matt: I kind of. We’ll talk more about her last week or next week, I guess, or in the next episode. I don’t know. Props to Bathsheba.

Hannah: She.

Matt: She’s a little savvy. I kind of. I kind of like her. So anyway, so. So in the immediate aftermath, they. They lose the child, but another child is born of them, Solomon. And then as the kingdom goes along, as David starts to get a little bit older in years, they’re sort of. The idea of sibling rivalry comes back into play. So there’s another disturbing scene with Tamar, one of the daughters who is sexually abused. I mean, raped by. What’s that? Is it Anwar?

Hannah: Amnon.

Matt: Amnon. Thank you. And so her brother Absalom decides he’s going to sort of be the agent of revenge on this, and so kills Amnon.

Hannah: Yep.

Matt: Thank you. And we’re back into it. We’re back. I mean, this could be Jacob and Esau. This could be Cain and Abel. We’re back in that Genesis sort of sibling rivalry spiral.

[Speak

er B]: Yeah. Well, that is super similar to what happens in Genesis 34, which is when Dinah was raped by someone else. I don’t think it was a family member, but she was raped by somebody. And her father, Jacob, didn’t really do anything about it.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: And so her brother Simeon and Levi take vengeance on her abuser. And so this is similar because David doesn’t really seem to do anything about it. He doesn’t bring justice to the situation. It says that he was furious.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: But he doesn’t do anything about it. So Absalom similarly takes matters into his own hands.

Matt: Yeah. And then, I mean, Absalom is. I mean, there’s just no other word for it. The picture that’s painted of him is a spoiled child.

Hannah: Oh, you think?

Matt: I think so, yeah. I mean, he is not corrected. He is not disciplined. He’s cocky and arrogant and I guess he’s exiled. So David does this thing where he sends him away, but it’s not.

Hannah: He asks to leave, does he? He like tricks David. He says, I have to go fulfill this vow that I made.

Matt: Ah, yes, okay.

Hannah: Ye. So then he goes away and he starts building up favor throughout Israel. So they all start liking him and favoring him. So that’s part of his long term strategy to overtake David’s kingdom.

Matt: Yeah. And then he makes a play.

Hannah: Yeah, yeah. So he gathers up the. The whole army of Israel is. Is how it describes it. His rebellion starts to gain momentum and so David decides to flee from Jerusalem to avoid destruction. And this is all in fulfillment of what the prophet Nathan said in 2nd Samuel 12:11, which was part of the consequence, or you know, the reality of David’s failure was that he said that the Lord was going to bring disaster on David from his own family. And it even says, and I will take your wives and give them to another before your very eyes. And he will sleep with them in broad daylight. Which is exactly what Absalom does.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: Which is crazy. He is like creepy. Yeah. On the roof of the palace.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: Which is the same place where David’s sin started.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: So it brings it back to the same place.

Matt: Yeah. And then we got another war. I mean, David’s on the run again and he’s got some army. He has a very loyal general who’s an interesting character in his own. This guy named Joab. And we get the sense that David doesn’t actually like Joab very much because there’s a couple episodes where he, Joab sort of goes off script a little bit, or as far as David’s concerned, like in the original situation with Abner, Joab’s a problem. In that situation, then even here, Joab’s a little bit of a situation. So David tries to replace him a couple times and Joab always manages to get his office back. So we’ll have to do another podcast about Joab, But Joab’s an interesting guy, and Joab shows up here. So Joab rallies to David’s side and keeps an army organized, and they’re able to defeat Absalom, or Absalom sort of defeats himself. And that moment that we alluded to earlier, David mourns when he finds out about the death of Absalom, and Joab kind of slaps him around a little bit.

Hannah: Yeah. Joab ends up being the one to actually kill Absalom.

Matt: Okay.

Hannah: Absalom gets, like, caught in a tree, which is, like, such a funny. He’s like riding on a donkey. And.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: His head gets caught in a tree, so he’s, like, dangling. And then there’s another man there who says, no, David told us not to kill him.

Matt: Yes.

Hannah: So he. He, you know, leaves hanging from the tree, I guess. Yeah.

Matt: It’s kind of a funny picture.

Hannah: Yeah. But then Joab comes back and he’s. He kills him.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: Which is. Yeah. At least the second time that he’s done something like that.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: Yeah.

Matt: And. And so he comes back and tells David this news, and David starts to mourn, as you alluded to. And Job’s like, what are you doing? Why? All these people have put their life at risk for you. And you’re more upset that your enemy, the person who’s trying to kill you and has killed people who are loyal to you. You’re more emotionally invested in that than you are all of these people who have been loyal to you. It’s a. It’s a very stern rebuke.

Hannah: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah, It’s. It’s really interesting. So David comes back into the. The throne after this situation. This passage is actually pretty long. What is it, five, six chapters?

Hannah: Yeah. The whole feud, you mean? Yeah, Yeah. I don’t even know.

Matt: Yeah, because it goes through chapter 20. Yeah. And then there’s a little bit of cleaning up to do there.

Hannah: Okay. Yeah. So we’ll see it kind of wrap up next week a little bit more.

Matt: Yea

h, yeah. And this is all I know. There are a bunch of people in our church that, like, sort of like fantasy literature. I can’t keep up with all that. But to me, this reads a lot like that. You know, there are perpetrators and conspiracy people and spies like David, one of David’s closest advisors, actually stays behind as a spy and provides false counsel to Absalom to try and work for David in that regard. So it’s all very Sinister and espionagey. And I don’t know if you like John Lecar or some of those writers here. There’s a lot in here for you. It’s. It’s really interesting, so.

Hannah: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt: But it is. We were doing so well with David, and now I don’t think we have anything for it. It’s. It’s a disappointing end, so. Just disappointing into his arc.

Hannah: Yeah. I mean, overall, he still is definitely a good king. Like, overall, he’s listening to the voice of the Lord, and when he does fail, he quickly repents, which is the type of king that Israel needs. But his failure demonstrates that he’s not the perfect king.

Matt: Right.

Hannah: So there is a perfect king who will come from his line, and that’s who we’re still looking forward for.

Matt: Yeah. So when Jesus shows up and he loves his enemies and he’s faithful and he lays down his life for others, and when he’s called the son of David and does not rebuke, that does not turn that away as the title. Yeah. If you’re. If you’re a good Old Testament reader or Hebrew Bible reader, a lot of alarm bells are ringing when you get to Jesus, because a lot of the promises about David and through David and to David land there. And Jesus receives those things.

Hannah: Yeah.

Matt: And other people see it in him in Palm Sunday. We happen to be recording this on Palm Sunday. So the famous story, Hosea hosanna to the son of David, you know, this is one of the things that people say about him. So all of these wonderful promises that the Lord makes to David we see come to fruition in the person of Jesus.

Hannah: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. Well, is there. What else do we want to say about David?

Hannah: I think. I think that’s it. Yeah, he’s definitely a type of Christ. You know, like all of the good parts of David, Jesus fulfills and completes even more perfectly than he could without David’s failures. So, yeah, he’s a major character that point us. Points us forward to Jesus.

Matt: Yeah. Well, let’s land it there. What about next week? What are we going to see in the next week of reading her?

Hannah: I didn’t look forward, so. Okay.

Matt: Cheater, Cheater. Well, David’s story will close, but we will meet his son Solomon, and there’s a little bit of sort of maneuvering in terms of who’s going to take the kingdom, but Solomon’s throne is established and a little bit like his father. Things are going to go well to begin with, and then they are not going to go so well. So we’ll do that. And then we’ll sort of see the line of Kings. We’ll learn more about that. But we keep waiting for the one true king to show up. And it’s going to be a while. So we’re going to see a lot of bad kings. But we’ll start with Solomon story next week. I think we might get introduced to a little bit of wisdom literature. So we’ll.

Hannah: We’ll talk more about that. I think we wrap up. There’s only 24 chapters in Second Samuel, so.

Matt: Yeah.

Hannah: Yeah, we’ll jump into the next book.

Matt: Yeah. So we’ll be in Kings, and we will. That’s fun. And a lot of fun names for you to pronounce. So that’ll be great.

Hannah: Oh, great.

Matt: Well, why don’t we go ahead and land it here? I’ll pray first and then we’ll be dismissed. Okay. Good.

Hannah: Okay.

Matt: Yeah. Lord, what a wonderful, gracious God you are. Thank you for your testimony to us and the written word of who you are and what you’ve done and the promises that you have made and all the ways that they have come true. Lord, you made a promise to David that one of his sons, one of his line, would reign on the throne forever and ever and ever. And we see you fulfill that promise in the person of Jesus. And we know from his work on the cross and his ascension to sit at your right hand that he will reign forever and ever and ever. So, Lord, you have kept that promise. You are keeping that promise, and we trust that you will ultimately keep that promise so that we can even taste and see it, Lord. And we long forward to that. Thank you for what you’ve done, Lord. I’m also mindful thank you for the example that David shows us that yes, he sins and yes, he fails, and yet he’s quick to confess and repent, even giving us language that we can use when we fail, when we repent. And we need to come to you, O Lord. Lord, I think about Psalm 51 all the time. Create in me a clean heart, O Lord. Restore to me the joy of my salvation and renew your spirit in me. Lord, thank you for all of David’s failur

e. He’s laid out a template so that we have language to come to you and confess and repent and experience the joy of the salvation that you have given us. And Lord, thank you for the testimony that David gave us about King Jesus and all the ways that we see your faithfulness in that, Lord, we want to live in that faithfulness and that promise. We want to give Jesus loyalty and worship for everything that he has done for us and all the ways that you have kept your promises through him. So hear our prayers as we ask in Jesus name name. Amen.

Hannah: Amen.

Matt: Amen. Thanks so much, Hannah.

Hannah: Yeah, thanks, Matt.

Matt: All right, see ya.