You may subscribe yourself at the Ascension site here and receive notifications in your email, or just follow along on my blog. Bible in One Year Readings Index
Chapter 24: Establishing Jerusalem as the Center of Worship
2 Samuel 24:1-9 ~ The Census
The people had begun to violate Yahweh's covenant treaty with Israel. We are not told the nature of these violations only that they were serious enough for God to withdraw his protection from Israel. 2 Samuel 24:1 says that God incited David to take a census but 1 Chronicles 22:1 says it was Satan. Since an act of evil is contrary to the nature of God (Wis 1:13-14; 2:23-24), it was that God allowed Satan to incite David to take a census (as in the narrative Job 1:6-12). The events that will unfold are not only a covenant judgment against Israel for unspecified covenant violations but will result in a covenant ordeal or test of loyalty and faith for David. The events associated with the census will bring about a turning point in salvation history.
Taking a census is of Israel is an act of religious significance and required a ransom paid to Yahweh's Sanctuary for each life to avoid any incidence of plague among the people during the census (see the census in Ex 30:11-16). Calling for a secular census of Israel was considered an impious act because it infringed upon the prerogatives of Yahweh who keeps the register of those who are to live or die and who blesses Israel with many sons and daughters when Israel is faithful (Ex 32:32-33). Only God can call a census since the people of Israel belong to Him, as He did in Numbers 1:1-47. For a king to call for a census of God's people is to suggest the people have passed from Yahweh's sovereignty to that of the human king.
Joab attempts to warn David not to take the census, but when he is overruled, he fulfills his king's orders. He began the census at the town of Aroer on the Arnon River which marked the southern boundary of Israelite territory in the eastern, Transjordan side of the River (Dt 2:36; Josh 13:9, 16). On the west side of the Jordan River, the boundaries were from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south; therefore covering the entire territory of Israel. But to this count was added the Israelites living in the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon as well as Hittite Kadesh, far to the north on the Orontes River, territories and peoples that David conquered and who were David's vassals.
2 Samuel 24:10-15a ~ The Epidemic
David's conscience begins to bother him and he concludes that he has done something both foolish and dangerous in calling for the census. He repents his sin before Yahweh and asks for forgiveness. God forgives David and offers him three possible forms of penance for his sin and for Israel's sin (24:13).
Question: What are David's three choices; which one does he chose?
Answer: The three forms of penance for David and Israel
- Three years of famine
- Invasion by a foreign army lasting three months
- Three days of an epidemic
David choses the penance of the least duration: the three days of an epidemic.
2 Samuel 24:15b-17 ~ David's Offer of Sacrifice
The plague began in the late spring at the time of the Jewish feast of Weeks (Pentecost in Greek) which occurred during the wheat harvest (Lev 23:15-21). David is facing a covenant ordeal. It is a test in which a member of God's holy covenant must make a choice between self-interest and self-sacrifice. This is David's finest moment. Every event of his life has led up to this test.
Question: To spare the people of Jerusalem, what does David say to Yahweh?
Answer: David offers to take the burden of sin entirely on himself. He offers up his life and the covenant God made with David's family in exchange for the lives of the people, God's "flock."
David, the Shepherd of God's people, makes this offer of sacrifice for the sake of the salvation of the people who are "the flock" of God (verse 17). God did not accept David's offer of sacrifice, but it was his willingness to make the unselfish offer that stayed God's hand of judgment and saved the people.
Question: David's offer of sacrifice prefigures what event in the New Testament? Notice the shepherd and sheep imagery in David's use of the word "flock" in verse 17. See Jn 10:11, 14-15.
Answer: His unselfish act prefigures the self-sacrifice of David's "son," Jesus of Nazareth, the "Good Shepherd," who willingly laid down His life for His sheep.
God's Altar on Mount Moriah
See the parallel passage in 1 Chronicles 21:18-28.
2 Samuel 24:18-25 ~ David purchases the threshing-floor for God's Altar
God sends the prophet Gad to David with the command to erect an altar to Yahweh on the threshing-floor belonging to a Gentile Jebusite named Araunah. The threshing-floor is located on the height of Mount Moriah above the city of Jerusalem. This will become the site of God's holy Temple in Jerusalem, and the building of the altar and the offering of sacrifices will atone for the sins of the people and bring an end to the plague.
Question: Why is a threshing-floor the perfect site for God's holy Temple? What is the symbolic significance?
Answer: A threshing-floor is where the valuable grain is separated from the worthless chaff just as the Temple will be where Divine judgment will separate the righteous from the wicked.
Question: Why does David refuse the gift of the land from the Jebusite owner and insist on paying for the property and offer fifty shekels of silver (about 15 pounds/6.8 kg of silver)?
Answer: God's altar must be built on a site which has been redeemed in just payment, not rented or given as a gift, to make it clear that God's holy altar is situated on the rightfully owned property of Israel.
Conclusion
The Judahite kings of David's "house" ruled for 415 years. It was David who brought all the twelve tribes of Israel together as a nation under the authority of his rule in the United Monarchy. The United Monarchy lasted through the reign of David's son, King Solomon.
But in c. 930 BC Solomon's son and successor, Rehoboam, was rejected by the ten northern tribes who installed Jeroboam I of Ephraim as their king, thus breaking from the Davidic monarchy and creating two kingdoms: the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah.
The Northern Kingdom had nine different dynasties of unfaithful kings before the Assyrian conquest in 722 BC.
The Southern Kingdom continued to be ruled by both good and bad descendants of David until the Babylonian conquest of 587/6 BC, when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed during the reign of Davidic King Zedekiah.
In 1994 fragments of a basalt stele were discovered at Tel Dan in northern Israel, and the inscription "House of David" (BYTDVD) was carved into the stele. It is the oldest non-biblical reference to the kings of Israel and Judah, as well as the first ancient reference to the royal Davidic dynasty.
David's Place in Salvation History
God has the perfect plan for the destiny of mankind. But even when man rejects God's plan, as in the case of Adam and Eve who rejected God's sovereign authority over their lives in wanting to judge for themselves what was good and what was evil, God adjusted His plan to bring about an even greater blessing to His human children through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, the Chosen One born from a woman to destroy the work of the devil in the Fall of man (Gen 3:15; 1 Jn 3:8).
So, what is the lasting significance of David's reign in God's Divine Plan? His reign is the beginning of what will be fulfilled in the eternal reign of Christ the King. God is the King of the Universe and all it holds; he has dominion over every nation on earth (Ps 96:10). However, the Israelites wanted a human king like the other nations (1 Sam 8:5). But since no human king can assume kingship except as the agent of the Divine King, God used the obstinacy of His covenant people to move forward His Divine Plan for mankind's salvation by allowing them to have an anointed human king of His choosing. King Saul was merely an interim king until God's "chosen one," David of Bethlehem, grew to maturity.
When David became king, the King of the Universe promised to establish David's "house" (2 Sam 7:8-16), that is his dynasty, in an eternal covenant. This was a turning point in the working of God's Divine Plan for humanity. St. Matthew understood this and in his genealogy of Jesus at the very beginning of his Gospel, he summarizes Gods entire plan of salvation by placing David at the middle point between Jesus and Abraham: The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham (Mt 1:1, emphasis added).
It was in David that God moved forward His Divine Plan, giving the people a human king who was to provide, through his descendant Jesus of Nazareth, the fullness of God's expression of "kingship" to His people in the Davidic son who was both human and divine. In the glorified Christ, God's Divine Kingship comes full circle in returning to the King of the Universe who continues to rule from the heavenly Sanctuary. With justice He directs the lives of all men/women and nations, calling them to their eternal destiny as royal heirs through the inheritance won for them by Christ Jesus to become, through Christian Baptism, the children of God the eternal King.
The choice of the threshing floor on Mount Moriah as the location for Yahweh's holy altar of sacrifice and the site of the covenant people's daily liturgy of sacrifice was not an arbitrary selection. In Sacred Scripture Mount Moriah is linked to the visionary experiences of Abraham and David, two ancestors of Jesus of Nazareth (Mt 1:1).
Temple Mount as seen from the Mount of Olives
The Temple on Mount Moriah was the place to experience a "vision of God," but the day was coming when that vision was to be manifested in the flesh. In the first century AD, when the "beloved" Son of God came to Jerusalem to face His covenant ordeal, the people beheld the vision of God in the promised Redeemer-Messiah who was both fully God and fully man. It was on this same mountain, on an elevation just below the summit where the Temple was built, that Yahweh provided another sacrifice. That sacrifice was "Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham" (Mt 1:1) who in the spring of 30 AD became the Lamb offered in the blood sacrifice of a New Covenant ordeal. But this time God did not stay the hand of the executioner as He did with Abraham and David. The vision of that sacrifice has filled the minds and hearts of sons and daughters of the human family in every succeeding generation and has become the center of liturgical worship for the New Covenant people of God until the end of time.
DAY 142
The Teachings of Jesus
CHALLENGE
“The Gospels don’t reliably convey the teachings of Jesus. The evangelists invented material based on their own views and
the needs of their communities.”
DEFENSE
The evidence shows the Gospels are reliable.
Perhaps the greatest controversy in the early Church was whether Gentiles had to be circumcized
and become Jews to be saved. This controversy is mentioned multiple times in Acts (10:1–11:18,
15:1–31, 21:25), and it dominates Paul’s epistles of Romans and Galatians. If there was ever a
controversy to tempt people to make up a saying of Jesus to settle the matter, it would be this.
Yet the circumcision controversy isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Gospels. That is a sign the
evangelists did not feel free to make up teachings and put them on Jesus’ lips.
This is also indicated by the way Mark handles the related question of whether kosher laws were
still binding. In his account of a controversy in Jesus’ day about why the disciples did not ritually
wash their hands before eating, we read of Jesus saying: “ ‘Do you not see that whatever goes
into a man from outside cannot defile him, since it enters, not his heart but his stomach, and so
passes on?’ (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, ‘What comes out of a man is what
defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft,
murder, adultery’ ” (Mark 7:18–21).
In a traditional Jewish view, unclean hands would defile food and make the eater ceremonially
unclean. Jesus indicates this isn’t true, for any dirt contaminating the food would pass out of the
body without bringing about true, spiritual uncleanliness. The comment “thus he declared all
foods clean” is Mark’s application of Jesus’ teaching to the different question of kosher foods.
This shows Mark did not feel free to invent a teaching of Jesus.
A final point is the fact that Paul’s teachings are nowhere quoted in the Gospels. Besides Peter,
Paul was the most influential apostle. His letters were among the earliest New Testament
writings, and if the evangelists felt free to simply attribute things to Jesus, we would expect some
of the things Paul wrote to end up on Jesus’ lips. Yet we don’t, not even in Luke, which was
written by one of Paul’s traveling companions.
Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense: 365 Days (Plus One) to Becoming a Better Apologist
No comments:
Post a Comment