40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Samuel 10:1-19 (Episode 268)

Episode Date: June 1, 2021

The king of the Ammonites dies, and David tries to deal kindly with his son, which is responded to with a grave insult. And David begins staying home while his men go out to fight. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Regional Event in Las Vegas 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast, check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. while you're over there hit that events page because at that events page you will be able to register for the here we still stand regional event in las vegas nevada chad's going to be there i'm going to be there a whole bunch of other people you're going to hear from flame scott keith you're going to hear from gretchen ronovic michael berg steven paulson there's a bunch of breakouts you can select from it's going to be a great time so you want to join us october 15th and 16th it's

only $65, and it includes your lunch on Saturday. This is the best deal going in events, period, ever. You got to do it. So that's what we're going to be doing this fall. We hope you will come and hang out with us. Chad, we are in chapter 10 of 2 Samuel. We, last week, got to hear about David being like, I got to show the kindness of God to someone from the house of Saul, particularly because I made a promise or an oath or a covenant to Jonathan. And we had this beautiful story about David and Jonathan's crippled son and got a real good picture of what it means to be invited to sit at the Lord's table forever and always. And now we're going to move back into David says, well, let's eat up.

Let's get some dinner in our bellies because tomorrow I got to go fight some people. Yeah, that's about right. Yeah, chapter 9 and 10 are pretty fascinating counterpoints to each other because you see David in a couple of different lights. His impetus, the reason he does what he does at the beginning of chapter 9 and chapter 10 is really the same. He's wanting to show chesed. He's wanting to show kindness or devotion or loyalty to somebody.

But in chapter 9, everything goes great because you have Mephibosheth, and he's grateful for the gift of David. He has a seat at David's table, and everything just works out the way that David wants it to. You get into chapter 10, and David once more wants to show kindness to the son of someone that he knew, just like, of course, this is the son of Jonathan that he showed mercy to. Now he's wanting to show mercy to the son of a king who just passed. Except this time, things are not going to go well.

In fact, they're going to go terribly. and so we'll see David's reaction how it differs from the way that he had to rejoice the way they rejoice with Mephibosheth now he's going to actually have to seek some retribution against this particular people group and this is setting up the stage for chapter 11 of course chapter 11 and 12 are probably the most famous chapters in second Samuel probably the most famous chapters in in 1 and 2 Samuel, because it's the whole story of David and Bathsheba and Uriah and Joab and a lot of other people too. So keep in mind as we're going through this chapter, and we'll just stick with chapter 10 today, we're not going to, we're going to save 11 for the next episode. But keep

in mind, as we're talking through everything that's happening here, is that structurally in 2 Samuel, this is all leading into chapter 11. So in fact, the battles that we're going to hear about today and one of the cities in particular is going to then come up again in chapter 11 as well as chapter 12. So as we're going through these, you know, the kind of the back and forth here and the threat and the retribution, all of that, as important as it is just as a story, it's really a story that serves as the threshold into chapter 11. So here's the way we start out. This is 2 Samuel 10, 1. It says, after this, the king of the Ammonites died, and Hanun, or Hanun, his son, reigned in his place.

And David said, I will deal loyally, that is, I will deal in chesed with Hanun, the son of Nahash, as his father dealt loyally with me. So what do we know so far? Well, this is the Ammonites. if you remember your Genesis episodes, the Ammonites are traced back to those two sons of Lot and his daughters from the incestuous union. So you had Moab, who was the son of one of the daughters, and Ammon, who was the son of one of the other daughters. So according to Genesis, the Ammonites have traced their lineage all the way back to Lot himself. And so in some ways, their family in that way, because of course Lot was the nephew of Abraham. But if you look through

the rest of the history leading up to this, the Ammonites on occasion were rebelling against the Israelites. We have in the story of Jephthah, the Ammonites were persecuting the Israelites. So you kind of have wars and skirmishes going on there. It's going to come up again here, and we're going to see it actually traced all the way through the rest of the Old Testament, where on occasion The Ammonites were loyal to Israel, pretty much only if they had to be, if they were like subjected to Israel, but they also rebelled against them a number of times. So that's who the Ammonites were. And in this particular case, we're told that after the king of the Ammonites died, and

that king was Nahash, that his son Hanun became king in his place. Now, one thing that we're not told is why David wanted to show kindness or loyalty to Nahash's son, because we're never told exactly what Nahash did to David to help him out. If you remember, the first time we encounter this guy, this King Nahash of the Ammonites, was back in 1 Samuel 11. This was right after Saul was anointed as king, and Nahash, the king of the Ammonites, was besieging an Israelite town, and he said, basically, if you surrender and all the guys come out and let us gouge out one of their eyes, then we'll let you live. and so this this town sent to Saul and Saul came in and delivered them and this was when Saul was kind of elevated as the new leader the the king uh the king of Israel so we we've heard about this guy before but in a very negative context he was wanting to take out one of the eyes of every male in this particularly Israelite city now what he did for David we don't know but my suspicion is

that when David was on the run from Saul that Nahash helped them out at some point because Nahash of course wouldn't have liked Saul and so he probably maybe provided some protection or resources to David whatever it was we're not told but whatever it was David remembered it and so just like he wanted to show mercy to the son of Jonathan because Jonathan and him were close. So now he wants to show compassion or consolation to the son of Nahash because he had been in some way kind to David before. So what does he do? Well, he sends some ambassadors, more or less. Some of the servants of David came into the land of the Ammonites and they were there to console him, that is to console the son of the king concerning his father. So far, so good,

right david's making maybe a personal as well as political move sending these ambassadors are going to say these good things sorry about the death of your father is there anything that we can do to to help you kind of you know basically maintaining a kind of loyalty that david has to the son of this man that had been kind to him then everything goes south the princes or the the leaders of the Ammonites, when they saw David send his servants, they said to Hanun, their Lord, do you think because David has sent comforters to you that he's honoring your father? Has not David sent his servants to you to search the city and to spy it out and to overthrow it? And of course, they were convincing. So here's what happened. We're told that Hanun took these ambassadors that

David sent and shaved off half of the beard of each of these guys and cut off their garments in the middle at their hips and sent them away. Now shedding off half the beard, we can understand that it's a little bit uncertain is exactly what happened with these garments. For instance, does it mean that he like cut off the rear end so that their butt was showing? Does it mean that he cut off the front so that their privates were showing? Whatever it was, of course, it was a grave insult to them. And the fact that he cut off their beards was another grave insult to them.

There's more to this that we can talk about in a minute. But just to kind of wrap up this part of the story, he sent them back with their beards shaved off, half shaved off, and their garments cut away. And when David finds out about this, the men were greatly ashamed, and he basically said, stay in Jericho. So stay kind of at the edge of the Israelite territory until your beards have grown back, and then you can return. You can tell already that things are not going to go well from this point on. Yeah, this is probably not an insult that David is going to leave unaddressed, knowing what you know about David. It's interesting. I mean, you don't know about the motivations of these advisors. It seems that if you are an advisor and this is happening, it seems reasonable that you might think that's what it is. oh sure you're you know the king died and now this other king says oh like let us come in and

we're gonna send some people in here to comfort you and stuff and now you know i'm gonna be there for you you can see why some why some advisors would be like no i don't think so well that's a bad idea and also it's not like david doesn't have a history of you know taking over stuff so so i get all that i don't know that this is the way you go about it though uh if you don't want to deal with david you can just say no i'm good you know i don't the insult seems like a miscalculation i mean i think you can just send them back and say hey we're we're good here you know we appreciate it but yeah you can walk away from the tiger but they just grabbed the tiger by the tail yes this is not a not a good move kind of interesting too i was uh i was looking at how this connects to some

other other parts of the uh of the israelite story so get this so in this particular case you have this presumably relatively young king i mean he's the son of the guy that died and he's swayed by the advice of his counselors right so he's swayed by the uh the guys who say no no no david is up to up to no good so it's very similar to an episode that we'll get to much later when we get into the books of the kings, where David's grandson, Rehoboam, so the son of Solomon, he listens to his advisors when they say, what you should really do is you should raise the taxes. You should tell the people you thought things were bad under my dad. They're going to be even worse under me, basically making himself to be a big and powerful king. So that's what Rehoboam does.

and what's fascinating is Rehoboam is half Ammonite because his his mother I didn't realize this just until this morning when I was looking looking over this material so his mother one of the wives many wives of Solomon was Naama and she was an Ammonite so it's kind of a cool parallel here so you have here an Ammonite young king who's listening to the unwise counsel of his counselors. And then later, you're going to have a half-Ammonite king, Rehoboam, who is listening to the unwise counsel of his counselors as well. And in both cases, of course, things are going to backfire terribly for the kings. Another thing interesting about what they did, and this might be a stretch, I don't know, but I'll put it out there for you to consider. So they did two things.

They shaved off half their beard and they cut their garments. First of all, in Leviticus 19, one of the things it's forbidden Israelites to do is to cut off the corners of their beards. So in doing this, this was a direct attack upon basically one of the laws of Israel by cutting off half their beard. And of course, the Israelite garments were to have on the corners of them, they had these tassels that hung down that were to remind them that they were a priestly people. So if they cut away part of their garments, then they were also cutting away that part, which, again, was an attack upon their very calling as Israelites.

So that's one possibility that kind of increases how insulting this was to the men. Another thing that could be going on is we know from a lot of other contexts that when people were in mourning in not just Israel, but this part of the ancient Near East, some of the things they would do would be pluck out their hair and to tear or cut away their garments. So it could be that it's almost a mocking of mourning rituals. so they were sent there to console the king's son at the death of his father and what does he do he basically mocks these men that were sent to comfort him so it's a mocking of these morning rituals so however you want to read that and kind of the implications of it uh is you know we got

we got options here but whatever the motivation whatever the real reason that this was done uh it was it was not going to be received well by by david yeah lots of options uh for this to be an insult no options for this to be something that you can just be like well i guess they weren't interested yeah yeah i guess yeah i guess it didn't go well so we'll just uh you know shrug it off and move on i mean i mean there's not there's not any way to to read this as not picking a fight no yeah yeah yeah they they had to have known surely what was going to happen as a result of this so uh we're telling verse six that when the when the ammonites saw that they had become odious or a stench basically they they stunk to david they knew they had to do something so what

what did they do well they did what basically everybody did back then if you're not able to to defeat a stronger people you got two options option one is to submit basically become a vassal state and that is clearly rejected by them by their insulting moves toward david's ambassador so that's option one which they have now uh let go of the other option is to uh gather around yourself a bunch of hired mercenaries so to send these messengers to your the peoples around you And if you have some allies, tell them, hey, I need your help. Or if you need to, you can hire some people groups to come to your side. And hopefully, if you can get enough people around, you're going to be able to defeat whoever's coming after you.

And that's what the Ammonites did. We're told that the Ammonites sent and they hired the Arameans. That could also be translated Assyrians. So the people from Aram are the Arameans or the Syrians. so they hire they sit and hired the the syrians the arameans of bet rehov and the syrians of zovah 20 000 foot soldiers and the king of makkah he had a thousand guys and the men of tov 12 000 guys so now we have basically five armies we got the ammonite army and then we have these four groups that they've hired so they are all gathering together and david of course finds out about this

he hears about it. So he's got to react. So he sends Joab. Remember Joab is his nephew and he's the leader of the army, not a particularly likable or respectable guy as we've heard about before. But in this particular chapter, I will say this, and we do begin to see more of this as we go through the rest of 2 Samuel. There are times when Joab compared to David actually comes out looking pretty good. Up to this point, Joab compared to David has not looked good. He's done a lot of just downright despicable things and cowardly things. He's come across petty, cowardly, vengeful. Not a lot of great attributes to ascribe to Joab thus far. Not thus far. But as we'll see, and perhaps this is where we do discern kind of a pivot with regard to him. Well, you might even

you might even ask yourself this question why like what we've seen nothing thus far other than being related to david that would make david keep this guy in this position like in fact it seems crazy that he would still hold this position you'd be like okay maybe you don't kill him but you got to send it back home to your sister or whatever like the fact that you have this guy in this position still is crazy but it is possible that we've only seen the bad things and that david knows things that we don't know and that that joab is in that position because there are other things that joab brings to the table that we just haven't seen yet and maybe we're about to see yeah and i think i think we are we're going to see it uh in this chapter we're going to see it

uh in certainly in chapter 11 and 12 and and actually in a lot of the other stories one thing that we will we will begin to see is that chapter 11 uh puts david on a downhill slope from which he really doesn't ever recover. Up to this point, we've had overwhelmingly positive images of David. You know, we've talked about some of the negatives, but as far as the way the Bible describes him, it's overwhelmingly positive up to this point. But chapter 11 will change all that. And part of that downhill slope is going to feature Joab multiple times. So we'll see more of his personality developed as we as we go on but anyway in this particular case verse seven david sends joab hears about he sends joab and all the host of of the mighty men so the ammonites come out

and they draw up in battle array at the entrance of the gate of their city and then so they're they're you know ready to fight they're in front of whatever city this is we're not told at this point which one it is but they're there by their by their gate and then you've got the syrians or the Arameans of Zovah and Rehov and the men of Tob and Ma'akah were by themselves in the open country. So you can kind of picture what's going on. What their plan of attack is, is basically they've divided forces so that they can come at Joab and his army from two different directions

in a pincer movement. So they're just going to kind of close in on them, some in the front, some in the back. It's, of course, a common military strategy. so what does joab do verse nine is joab saw the battle was set against him both in front and in the rear in the hebrew it's basically like a two-faced battle we might say so i got people in front of me got people behind him so joab decides that what he has to do is he's got to choose some of the israelites to fight on the side to fight the ammonites at their city gate

and then he's got some of his men he's got to fight against the syrians who are behind them and he puts so he takes charge of some of the men and then he takes his brother abishai we've heard about him before too and he puts them against the the ammonites so job's going to go against the syrians and then abishai is going to go against the ammonites thereby the entrance of the gate and they make this deal where listen if if the syrians are too strong for me you can help me. If the Ammonites are too strong for you, then I'm going to come and help you. And then he issues something which sounds a lot like Joshua. So Joab has this military strategy. So we see he's intelligent, he's planning, but he also gives this speech, which is not very common in first and

second Samuel to hear these kinds of military speeches. But Joab delivers one. He says, be of good courage and let us be courageous for our people and for the cities of our God. And may the Lord do what seems good to him. I mean, that speech could be lifted from the book of Joshua, where Joshua was trying to, you know, tell his people to be courageous, be brave, go out there and fight for the Lord. And what happens? Verse 13, Job and his people who were with him drew near to battle against the Syrians, and those guys just take off. So the people who were in the open country, the hired mercenaries, more or less, as soon as they see that they're not going to be able to win the battle. They turn tail and run. And the Ammonites, when they see

their hired mercenaries, the Syrians running away, then they flee before Abishai and they go into the city and presumably close the gate. So on both fronts, both the group led by Joab and the group led by Abishai were victorious. And so Joab goes back from fighting against the Ammonites and returns to the capital city of Jerusalem. And so this is the easiest battle ever. So you just start charging, and then everyone just runs. Yeah, there's no list of even casualties in this particular case. Yeah, on either side.

So things could not have gone better as far as Joab is concerned. Now there's, of course, more of the story that we'll get to in just a minute. It is worth mentioning that verse 9, excuse me, verse 7, says that when david hears about this he sent joab and all the army the mighty men to my knowledge the first time that we see david not taking charge of the army yeah david is joab yeah david is like the premier warrior king i mean that's that's david is not like some other kings who maybe you know are sitting back home and you know you know they've got a military advisor and they're just calling the shots no david's a dude who is the dude that you're most afraid of when the battle

i mean you see david and you're and you're freaked out so yeah it it is telling that he is not out there with his men because uh that will be part of a downward trend for him this is the not going out to battle with this man is not going to serve david well yeah so verse 7 says when david herbert he sent Joab. Now, if you turn the page to 2 Samuel 11, it said it happened in the spring at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they attacked the Ammonites. So notice the parallel language there, right? He sends Joab against the Ammonites in this particular case. And then chapter 11 is going to begin with once more David sending Joab. So David is, I'm assuming, kind of getting comfortable with being

king. You know, he's captured Jerusalem, and he's been promised in 2 Samuel 7 that his dynasty is going to be secure, and the seed is going to come from his line, and things are kind of getting where he wants him to be. And so he's settling into this kind of, oh, a laid back posture, we might say, or just kind of enjoying maybe being king. And so he doesn't think that he needs to be the one who's out there leading his troops, which is what kings always did in the ancient world. They were the ones who were the leaders in battle. And now we hear him sending joab and we're going to hear in chapter 11 him sending joab as well so there's a we might call it a hint of this downward trajectory that we're going to certainly see in in chapter 11 and you

might say like well maybe he's just getting older he's not that old at this point i mean i mean he's older but he ain't that old no no and as we'll see in just a few more verses he's he's he will go out to battle but the point is at this particular juncture he does not and if david was that upset over the way that his ambassadors were treated how they were humiliated then why did he send joab instead of going himself yeah but of course he he doesn't so we have a uh we have this we have this victory and then job goes back to goes back to jerusalem so the syrians verse 15, when the Syrians saw that they'd been defeated by Israel, they gathered themselves together. So these hired mercenaries decide they're going to gather together. And Hadadazer,

now we've heard that name before. We'll come back to that in a second. Hadadazer sent and brought out the Syrians who were beyond the Euphrates. So Hadadazer, we encountered a couple chapters before, back in chapter 8, which has led some people to think that actually what's happening in chapter 11 is a retelling or maybe not retelling, but an expansion on what happened in chapter 8. It's possible that some of the details of the battle with Hadadezer in chapter 8 don't match the details of the battle in chapter 10. But it's not common for the biblical narrative not to present things in a strict chronological order. We've seen many examples of that where the historical order of events is kind of switched around just for the sake of whatever the

structure of the book is. So it could be that what we're reading about now actually happened back in chapter 8, or maybe it's just something that happened later on. But don't ever worry about the chronology not being in order. That's very typical of the Bible. But anyway, this is the Hadadezer that we've talked about before. And he's bringing all these Syrians from beyond the Euphrates. So he's more or less gathering all his troops and they come to a place called Helam with Shobak, the commander of the army of Hadadezer at their head. So David finds out about this, about the gathering of all these troops together. So he gathers all Israel together and he crosses the Jordan and he comes to

Helam. So the Syrians are gathered together for battle David's gathered together with his men for battle and they go out for the fight and as you might expect the Syrians flee before Israel

and David killed the Syrians and now we do have some numbers. David killed the Syrians the men of 700 chariots and 40,000 horsemen he wounds the command of the army Shobak, so that he died there. And when all the kings who were servants of Hadadezer saw that they'd been defeated by Israel, what did they do? They make peace with Israel and became basically subject to them, became vassals to the people of Israel. And the Syrians were afraid to save

the Ammonites anymore. I bet they were. That was the last time when the Ammonites came calling, wanting to know if they would be willing to go fight against the Israelites on their behalf. uh it'd be like nope sorry been there done that not gonna make that same mistake twice yeah i mean it seems that the syrians know this too i mean like whenever it comes time to to actually do it they're they actually like ah never mind we're not doing this like so they all come out and i don't know if they're just like maybe we can just look intimidating and then when we're not like we just run but like now multiple times they've just been like nope yeah i'd be wanting my money back if i was the uh if i was the ammonites and i had some

hired mercenary armies, and every time they go out for battle, it seems like all it takes is a good charge of the Israelites, and they decide they're going to retreat. They're like, you guys aren't worth the money we paid to protect us. No, not at all. Now, one of the things that is kind of hinted at again, kind of implicit in this chapter, is something that's probably going to uh lead into kind of the the way the narrative is going to unfold from here on out so if you if you look at how the uh the story in 11 goes there's a lot of splitting a lot of cutting in half so you have uh half of the beard cut off you have their garments cut in the middle that's back in verse four and then when you get to the arrangement of the armies you've got the army split you've got

the Ammonites leaving half of the people to the city, and then the other half of the army, the hired mercenaries, are in another place. And then, of course, Joab, seeing the situation, he splits his own people in half. He sends some of them against the people at the city gate. He sends some of them against the Assyrians. So some of the commentators that I've looked at on this particular chapter suggest, and it's pretty convincing actually, that kind of between the lines here, we see the same thing that's going to come up from chapter 11 onward, where there is splits and divisions between all of the particular people involved in David's story. So there's going to be a split of the kingdom itself, when there's the coup of Absalom, there's going to be splits

within David's family. So this splitting or having or fracturing, this kind of part that's built into the very story of chapter 10 is, as it were, a preamble to the major splintering of David and his kingdom that we're going to see beginning with chapter 11 and Bathsheba and Uriah and all the things that are going to be the result of David's act. So that's one of the things to bear in mind when you're reading through chapter 10. Another thing, it's kind of a detail that I find interesting too is is these ammonites so back when we're first introduced to uh to saul and he goes and protects the city of the israelites against uh nahash king of the king of the ammonites the threat was or not even not really a deal but what they said is that hey if all the guys come

out we're just gonna we're gonna gouge out one of your eyes right they're gonna take out half of their eyes this is like an ammonite thing because you look in verse four and the ammonites are having again so they're cutting the beard in half and they're cutting the garments in half so maybe this was like an ammonite cultural thing if you really want to insult somebody you take away half of something of theirs we'll take away half of your eyesight if you come out and surrender to us we'll take out half of your beard we'll cut out half of your half of your garments i don't know that that was a particular uh cultural feature of the ammonites but at least it's a kind of interesting detail about the way that they they dealt with people that they considered to be to

be their enemies but of course it didn't work out so well for them because they're they're they're having their the insults that they gave by cutting beards and cutting garments ended up in the full retribution of david against them yeah i mean when you think about david uh you know staying home then going out and then in chapter 11 we're going to see him stay home again david has been so victorious he no doubt is like yeah look all i do is win and uh these battles are are pretty easy it's not really necessary that i be there i mean he hasn't he there is no evidence to be placed before him that like his presence there is crucial i mean the when he sent joab out they didn't even do any fighting this time that he goes out you know they actually do some fighting and so he's

like yeah i mean when i when i gotta fight somebody maybe this is his move going forward he's like i'll send joab out initially you know if we have to go back out a second time i'll go and uh but you know why go out if joab can just make everyone run away yeah yeah it does seem to be the posture that he that he has adopted now to kind of uh telescope ahead here uh it's interesting that after everything happens in chapter 11 and then in part of chapter 12, when it's time for the city to actually be taken, David is still not there. He's still at home. And Joab, again, to kind of show some of his emerging personality, he wisely says, listen, you need to get out here because if I take this city, then all the glory is going to go to me. So it's like he has to sort

of forced the hand of David to come out to where this city, the Ammonites is going to be taken so that David can actually be the one who is, who has given the credit. But, you know, we've, we've covered, of course, David's life from beginning to end. And it's been, uh, uh, been really interesting to see kind of the way that he has changed. I mean, David is a person just like all of us. And if you've known someone your whole life, then you've seen how they themselves change, right? there's there's the natural maturity that people everybody goes through and there's the the growth in hopefully in knowledge and wisdom that everybody goes through and you see the personality begin to emerge more and more as you you know observe certain episodes in their lives and it's no

different for david you know we meet him he's uh he's a young guy what we guess probably 16 something like that he's not old enough to be in the the army yet but uh he's you know extraordinarily courageous perhaps a little bit of that youthful bravado going on when uh when he goes out to fight goliath and then for a while i mean he's just kind of spotless right he can't he can do no wrong when he's guiding leading saul's armies and uh then you know we can see many times that he is truly a faithful and God-fearing Israelite. He doesn't kill Saul. He would not dare touch the Lord's anointing. In fact, he feels awful that time that he cuts off a garment, you know, a corner of Saul's cloak. So you see a lot of the growth of David as a person

from kind of, you know, this youthful bravado to a capable, capable leader. And then, you know, we begun to see some cracks in his persona. You know, the fact that he's multiplying wives is not a good sign. And now, you know, all of this is leading up to chapter 10, where we can begin to see him relaxing too much, maybe enjoying being a king too much. And it could be one of these cases where, you know, once you've had so many successes, so many victories, it all goes to all goes to your head and you begin to see that all this is not a gift in god's work but instead an entitlement and so you can begin bit by bit episode by episode to see these these cracks begin to show and to show in david until finally of course these are fully exposed in in chapter 11

but just you know even on the even on a non-theological level just to observe david's life up to this point has been fascinating, because you can see both the good as well as the bad that is displayed in his personality. Yeah, and some of it's the same stuff. I mean, the stuff that makes David so interesting at the front end is, wow, I mean, how can this young guy be so confident? I mean, David never lacks confidence. David never seems afraid. David is is a guy who uh is courageous uh who's bold who is supremely confident and that is the thing that you would if you would look at his life uh early on you'd be like well that's that's one of the great attributes of david uh it's also the thing that is going to get him into big trouble uh that

and that's how that usually works uh is that your your greatest strength is also something that you have to keep an eye on yeah yeah although that greatest strength is always a always a double-edged sword so david is i mean he's a he's a great example of the uh that struggle of sinner saint that of course we all we all uh are struggling with that civil war going on within us and you know at times it's it's not as evident at times it's it's painfully evident and uh that painfully evident episode is the one we're going to get to in the in the next episode but you know on a on a on the on the theological level looking at david we can see here how god was using him to bring him to the point where he is that that designated leader of israel but also he's going to use him

in a different sort of way in the aftermath of 2 Samuel 11 and 12 to give us, for instance, Psalm 51, to give us the story of repentance, to give us the narrative of confession and absolution and all that goes along with it. So we're about to be opened up to a whole new side of David in chapter 11, and with that, a whole new side to how God is at work in his life, and then, of course, how he's at work in all of our lives, too, through confession, repentance, and forgiveness. Yeah, and we're going to leave it right there, because we're not going to get into chapter 11 this week, because it jumps right into it. So we will do that next week, so hopefully you'll join us. Chad, I'll see you then.

All right, see you then. We'll see you next time.