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Day 124: King David Rules
Chapter 5: David is King of Israel and captures Jerusalem
2 Samuel 5:1-5 ~ David is Anointed King of Israel
David is first approached by all the "staff-bearers" of Israel (verse 1) and then by the elders (verse 3). The "staff-bearers" are probably the princes/chieftains of the twelve tribes. God designated the princes/chieftains of the tribes in Numbers 1:1-16 and in chapter 2. These men are described as ... men of repute in the community; they were the leaders of their ancestral tribes, the heads of Israel's thousands (Num 1:16) and as the men who lead their tribes in the march and carried the tribal standards (Num 2:2). The elders are the ruling judicial body of each tribe (Ex 18:25-26; Num 11:16-17). David has the support of the common people and their various civil and judicial leaders.
Question: In 2 Samuel 5:3-5 David is anointed King of Israel. How many times is David anointed? Also see 1 Sam 16:13; 2 Sam 2:4.
Answer: Three times.
- First he was as a boy privately anointed by Samuel (1 Sam 16:13).
- Next he was made king over the tribe of Judah (2 Sam 2:4).
- Finally he was crowned king over a united Israel (2 Sam 5:3).
The United Kingdom of Israel only lasted 95 years, the Northern Kingdom of Israel survived 208 years (ruled by nine different dynasties), but David's dynasty ruled over Israel and then over the Southern Kingdom of Judah for 425 years!
God chose David to rule over His people when David was still a boy tending his father's sheep in Bethlehem. God sent the prophet Samuel to anoint him (1 Sam 16:1, 10-13). Later, as a young man David fought in the army of Israel's King Saul and became a mighty warrior who was loved and respected by the people. After Saul's death, David's tribe of Judah made him king over them, but it wasn't until seven and a half years later that the other tribes came to David and asked him to be their king. At the time David became king of all the tribes of Israel, he was thirty years old (2 Sam 5:4). When the tribes said to David "Look, we are your own flesh and bone," literally in the Hebrew: "we your bone and we your flesh," they were acknowledging their kinship link with him and God's command that only Israelites chosen by God could be kings over the covenant people (Dt 17:15).
Question: When was this expression of kinship as "bone and flesh" first spoken in Scripture and by whom? See Gen 2:23.
Answer: These words are very words Adam used when he took Eve as his wife, acknowledging the kinship bond that now, with God's blessing, existed between them when he said, "For this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" [literal Hebrew].
The term bone and flesh/flesh and bone is used in Scripture to express kinship:
- By Adam to Eve (Gen 2:23)
- By Abimelech to the people of Shechem (Judg 9:2)
- By Israel to David (2 Sam 5:1; 1 Chr 11:1)
- By David to the Judahites (2 Sam 19:13)
- By David to his nephew Amasa (2 Sam 19:14)
- In Numbers 27:17, we have the definition of the ideal Mosaic leader that foreshadows David, the future shepherd king of Israel in 2 Samuel 5:2-4. The literal Hebrew translation of Numbers 27:17 reads "to lead out and bring in" (IBHE, vol. I, page 428). But it is also the Mosaic model fulfilled in the Messiah, David's heir who is Jesus of Nazareth. See the comparison below between David, the prophetic promises of the future Messiah and Jesus.
| David and the Davidic Kings | The Promised Messiah | Jesus |
| Elders of Israel to David: "In the days past when Saul was our king, it was you who led Israel on its campaigns [you who led out and brought in Israel], and to you it was that Yahweh promised, 'You are to shepherd my people Israel and be leader of Israel.'" 2 Sam 5:2-4 | Yahweh: "I will seek out my sheep and will deliver them from all the places where they were scattered ...And I will gather them from the peoples and will bring them out and gather them in..." Ez 34:12-13 "I shall raise up one shepherd, my servant David, and put him in charge of them to pasture them [and he shall feed them]; he will pasture [feed] them and be their shepherd." Ez 34:23 | Jesus Christ, son of David ... Mt 1:1 "...I am the gate of the sheepfold... anyone who enters through me will be safe [saved]: such a one will go in and out and will find pasture [feeding]... "I am the good shepherd..." Jn 10:7-9, 15 Jesus: "and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world." (Jn 6:51b) "Take it and eat," he said, "this is my body." Jesus to Peter: "Feed my sheep..." Jn 21:17 |
| Yahweh's judgment of the failure of the Davidic kings: I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains like sheep without a shepherd." 1 Kng 22:17 | Yahweh: "For lack of a shepherd they have been scattered, to become the prey of all the wild animals; they have been scattered" Ez 34:5 "I myself shall pasture my sheep, I myself shall give them rest, declares the Lord Yahweh. I shall look for the lost one, bring back the stray ... I shall be a true shepherd to them." Ez 34:15-16 | ... they were troubled and abandoned like [scattered] sheep without a shepherd. He [Jesus] said in reply, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel." Mt 15:24 "For the Son of Man has come to save what was lost." Lk 19:10 Jesus: I am the good shepherd... Jn 10:15 |
| As for you, my sheep, the Lord Yahweh says this: "I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and he-goats." Ez 34:17 | Jesus: "When the Son of Man comes in his glory ... All nations will be assembled before him and he will separate people one from another as the shepherd separates sheep from goats." Mt 25:31-32 | |
| Michal E. Hunt Copyright © 2014 | ||
The numbers 7 and 40 are symbolic numbers in Scripture in the Old Testament and in the New Testaments (see the document "The Significance of Numbers in Scripture. " Sometimes the numbers are not literal, however, the seven and a half years David is said to have ruled over Judah seems to be a literal number since symbolic numbers are always rounded. The 40 years David ruled may be literal or it may be symbolic since it is the ideal number of years for a righteous leader or a period of peace.
The United Kingdom of Israel only lasted about 102 years (Saul 20 years, Ishbaal 2 years, David 40 years, and Solomon 40 years), and the Northern Kingdom of Israel with nine different dynasties survived 208 years, but David's dynasty ruled over Israel and then the Southern Kingdom of Judah for 425 years until the Babylonian conquest!
2 Samuel 5:6-12 ~ The Capture of Jerusalem
After being anointed king of a united Israel, David began to build up the kingdom by driving out Israel's enemies and establishing borders and frontiers. He needed a capital city that would be a neutral setting and not dominated by any one of the tribes. David chose Jerusalem, a walled Jebusite city that had never been successfully conquered by the Israelites that was built on the crest of the Judean mountains of central Israel just five miles north from Bethlehem (Judg 1:21) and some twenty miles west of the Dead Sea's northern end.
The city was built over heights ranging from 2300 to 2500 feet above sea level and surrounded by valleys. The citizens of Jerusalem at one time were vassals of the Egyptian Pharaohs.
Jerusalem had once been called Salem but had been renamed after Abraham had a vision of the divine on Mount Moriah near the town (Gen 22:1-18). In the test of a covenant ordeal, Abraham was told by God to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac. Abraham passed the test in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac in the belief that since God had promised him descendants through Isaac that God would raise his son from the dead (Heb 11:17-19).
Question: What is the other connection to Salem/Jerusalem in salvation history prior to David's capture of the town? See Gen 14:17-20; Heb 7:1-3; Ps 110:4 and CCC 58.
Answer: God's priest-king Melchizedek was the king of Salem. Abraham acknowledged Melchizedech as God's representative, was blessed by him, was fed by him in a ritual ceremony, and paid him a tithe of all the captured booty from his victory over the kings of Mesopotamia.
The citadel of Zion was the Jebusite fortress on Mount Zion that later came to be called the "City of David." David cleverly avoided a direct assault on Jerusalem's walls but exactly how he managed to enter the city was a mystery.
Verse 8, referring to the blind and the lame, is difficult to translate in the Hebrew. It is true that anyone with a deformity was forbidden entrance to the inner courts of the Jerusalem Temple, but the Temple wasn't built until more than seven years after David's death and so this verse is probably a gloss by a later scribe.
2 Samuel 5:13-16 ~ Children Born to David in Jerusalem
In violation of the "Laws for the King," David continues to take more wives and concubines. Many of the wives were probably brides from foreign powers with whom David made treaties and many of the concubines were probably gifts from foreign kings, according to the customs of the times. This was the result of Israel being recognized the first time as a nation by foreign powers. However, what was customary for the culture of the times was no excuse for David's violation of God's law. Just as what is customary or even lawful according to our times are still sins if contrary to God's law and the teachings of the Church are still sins.
Some of the names of David's sons you will recognize: Nathan is listed in St. Luke's genealogy in Luke 3:31 and believed by the Fathers of the Church to be the Virgin Mary of Nazareth's ancestor, tracing Jesus' biological link to David, while Solomon is listed in St. Matthew's genealogy and is believed to be St. Joseph's ancestor, listing Jesus' legal link to David (Mt 1:6-7).
2 Samuel 5:17-21 ~ David's First Victory over the Philistines
While David was king of Judah at Hebron, the Philistines evidently still considered him a vassal of the king of Gath, but now that he has been declared King of Israel they have determined that David is a threat and they mobilize their army against him. It is unknown to what "stronghold" David "went down;" perhaps he went to Adullam in the desert of southern Judah (1 Sam 22:1-5). It is unlikely that he was at the citadel on Mount Zion in Jerusalem since it is said that David "went down" and not that he "went up" as he would have to the citizen on Mt. Zion. If he and his men were at Adullam, they would have surprised the Philistines by attacking from the south.
The Philistines gathered their forces in the Valley of the Rephaim, a broad sunken plain/valley southwest of Jerusalem (see Josh 15:8; 18:16). David consulted Yahweh as was always his custom (a significant seven times in 1 and 2 Samuel: 1 Sam 23:2, 4; 30:8, 2 Sam 2:1; 5:19, 23; 21:1) and was told that victory was his. The army of Israel defeated the Philistines who departed in such a hurry that they left the idols they had brought to the battle behind (also see 1 Chr 14:11). Afterward David named the site of the battle Baal-Perazim, meaning "lord of the breach."
2 Samuel 5:22-25 ~ David's Second Victory over the Philistines
For a second time the Philistines marshal their forces and attack David in the valley southwest of Jerusalem. God gives David the strategy for the battle and tells him to attack from the rear near a grove of balsam trees.
The Israelites pushed the Philistines from Gibeon, a town five and a half miles northwest of Jerusalem (2 Sam 2:12-17), all the way back to the pass leading to the Canaanite city of Gezer that was situated on the last of the central foothills sloping down to the northern Shephelah lowlands. The city, which was a under the control of the Philistines, guarded the crossroads of the trade highway called the "Way of the Sea" and the road to Jerusalem. The power of the Philistines is now broken and they will become vassals of David and Israel.
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A Daily Defense
Day 124 Who Did What in the Gospels?
CHALLENGE: “The Gospels contain error since they describe different people performing the same action. Matthew says a centurion approached Jesus about healing his servant, but Luke says Jewish elders did this (Matt. 8:5–13; Luke 7:1–10). Mark says James and John made a request, but Matthew says their mother made it (Mark 10:35–45; Matt. 20:20–28).”
DEFENSE: The biblical authors had liberty to describe events in terms of the principals or their agents. More than one person can be involved in an action. The person on whose behalf the action is performed is known as the principal, while the person who actually does the action is known as the agent. Both today and in the ancient world, actions can be described as if the principal or the agent performed them.
During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, newspapers might have reported, “American president Kennedy told Soviet premier Khrushchev to take his missiles out of Cuba.” In reality, Kennedy and Khrushchev (the principals) never spoke. Their exchanges were carried on through diplomatic intermediaries (their agents). Because the principals were the main actors, newspapers could speak as if the two directly engaged each other. The diplomatic intermediaries were secondary.
In Scripture, we read that Moses built the tabernacle (2 Chron. 1:3) and Solomon built the temple (1 Kings 6:1–38). In reality, both were leaders too lofty to do the labor themselves. They used workmen who acted on their behalf (Exod. 38:22–23; 1 Kings 7:13–45). Because Moses and Solomon were the principals, they are sometimes mentioned, while the workmen who were their agents may not be mentioned.
The evangelists had the same freedom choosing how to describe an incident. They could describe it in terms of the agents acting (as with Luke’s mention of the Jewish elders and Matthew’s mention of the apostles’ mother) or the principals acting (as with Matthew’s mention of the centurion and Mark’s mention of James and John).
When the evangelists chose the latter, the action of the agents may be said to be “telescoped” into the principals on whose behalf they acted. This literary technique is used in the Bible in more situations than we use it today, but it is not an error. It is a known literary device.
Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense: 365 Days (Plus One) to Becoming a Better Apologist
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