40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Samuel 1:17-2:4 (Episode 259)

Episode Date: March 22, 2021

Chad and Daniel discuss the meaning of lament and why we should embrace it while looking at David's lament over the death of Saul and Jonathan. How does David want Israel to remember these men? Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 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. We left off last week, Chad, with David getting word that Saul had died. And just do a little bit of a recap as we start. What we believe happened is that a guy came along, the body of Saul. He's a deserter. He's a scavenger.

He's not with his people, the Amalekites. Somehow, for some reason, he is on his own. And he comes across the body of Saul and thinks, Well, I'm going to take this crown. I'm going to take this bracelet. and I'm going to find David and tell him that I have delivered him from his greatest foe. I have done this great service. Now, it does appear to this guy that Saul has not died in some kind of epic sword fight

or something like that. It does appear to him, I think, that Saul has died of a self-inflicted wound. So he's got to tell a story that somewhat matches that because he doesn't take the body with him or whatever. And if he does go back into Israel with David, other people might say, well, this is how we found him, and this is what appeared. So he says, look, I came across him. He was wounded, and he asked me to kill him, so I did.

And here's his stuff to prove it. It's a massive miscalculation on this man's part. We assume David at least believes Saul's dead. I don't know if David totally believes this guy's story. It seems like David has some questions and is a little bit skeptical. But he does have Saul's stuff. And so he does believe, at the very least, that Saul is dead, and this guy's confession, whether it's true or not, is enough for David to say, yeah, what you just said is enough to get you killed, and that's exactly what happens.

And we sort of left it there as David and his men are fasting, they tear their clothes, they're mourning, and we are going to get in today into David's lament. And so as we start, as we were talking before we started recording, lament is probably something that we read in the Bible a lot and don't pause and think, what exactly is that? What does that mean that there's a lamentation? I mean, we have a whole book of lamentations, but the word lament or lamentation appears all over the Old Testament. And it might be something that we sort of just read and think we understand, and maybe we do in part understand it.

But what's the difference between, why doesn't it just say that David grieved over Saul or something like that? I mean, what is this lament word that we don't use so much in our vocabulary? Yeah, when we hear the word lament, we ordinarily think in terms of the verb itself, right? So you're lamenting something. That is your, when we use the word, typically we think it means that we're sorry something happened. So I lament that my team lost. I mean, we don't use that language. that's kind of what we understand it to mean. But lament in the Bible is typically referring to

what you might refer to as ritualized grief, I suppose, would be one way to think about it, because it is taking the sorrow, and the sorrow could be over sin, it could be over a personal disaster, it could be over a national disaster. It's taking this grief, this mourning, it could be fear it could be anger it could be all these different kinds of emotions and actually translating those into words which become a lament so in the bible lament is a is a genre just like we have all other kinds of historical and poetic genres so we have a number of lament psalms in fact if i remember the numbers correctly some some people say that up to 40 percent of the 150 psalms are lament psalms in one way or another, and some of these are complete laments, meaning that there's

no element of rejoicing or giving of thanks whatsoever, like Psalm 88 is a complete lament psalm. There's no breakout of hallelujah at the end. Often you'll have a lament psalm that will begin with a lamentation, expressing grief over whatever it might be that's troubling the individual or Israel. And then toward the end, there's this resolution where God acts to save. And then there's a giving of thanks for God's actions. And then, of course, we have a whole book named Lamentations, which is centered upon the destruction of Jerusalem. Now, when we think about lament just today, I mean, I think it's something that's kind of lost on us. Like if I say to someone, what you need to do is lament, or it would be good if the church engaged in more

lament. People might look at you like, well, what are you talking about? How exactly would that happen? And I think one thing that could happen is simply by the church using more lament psalms, both privately or in families, as well as in a congregational setting. I mean, there's all sorts of things that happen all the time, either to communities or to families or even to our nation. Which would be a great opportunity for us to engage in lament. And by lament, we just basically are crying out to God saying, here's our situation. This is what we're going through. Why is this happening?

Where are you? Why don't you answer us? So it's this very blunt, honest address to God in which we're speaking to him about these things that we are going through. Now, in David's case, what he's lamenting is the death of Saul and Jonathan and a number of Israelites as well. But it's primarily centered upon the death of these two. And it's a little bit different than a typical lament. He isn't crying out to God saying, why is this happening? But that's what a number of laments do.

They place before God whatever trials and tribulations and sufferings and grieving the person or community is going through and ask God to intervene. So it's a very bold, very honest, very just kind of straightforward address to God saying, answer us, hear us, do something to alter this bad situation we find ourselves in. Yeah, one of the classic laments that the people of Israel have is very short, all the way up to the Messiah, certainly under Roman occupation, is how long, O Lord, right? This is like your standard lament. You promise something, and there's a lot of suffering going on. How long is this going to last? I think we're uncomfortable with lament because lament feels helpless, so we don't like that. Lament does not offer God solutions. It doesn't try to partner with him in fixing whatever is going on. There's a helplessness, there's a dependency on the work of someone else in lament that I think we're pretty uncomfortable with, maybe especially today, maybe especially in the West.

We don't like that idea. I think that you see some of this. I think maybe the, you talk about just sort of ritual grieving, and if you go to a lot of funerals now, I think the funeral is like the, one of the closest things we have to like just sort of ritual lament. You see more and more that people are uncomfortable with that. They don't want to do funerals anymore. They want to do celebrations of life or whatever it is.

And I know when I die, I hope they just have like a straight up funeral. There's a short sermon and people can, you know, if anyone's upset, who knows, maybe they won't be that upset. But if anyone is upset when I die, they can grieve over that. But I think that part of the reason you see us more and more not do funerals in the historic way that we've done funerals is that it's uncomfortable. There's a helplessness to it. There's something going on that you can't reverse. And I think that maybe that's the closest thing that we had as a society of lament, and I think you see us kind of turning away from that as much as we can. Yeah, I can't speak for other countries, but certainly in America, there is always a rush to getting past grief.

People are, as it were, pushed to, okay, get past whatever you're going through and move on to a positive outlook on whatever situation you might be going through. So there's this idea that you can kind of microwave, you can rush along the grieving process. And we all know that's untrue. We might pretend otherwise, but it takes people a while to get through whatever they're going through. And to push people to hurry through that is to invite just ongoing issues, because until we confront whatever pain or whatever grief that faces us, we can't really move through that on to healing and hope, healing and hope beyond that. And, you know, with everyone, this varies. Some people might go through grief at a more rapid pace than others do, but we all have to go through it. And I think to add to what you were saying, another reason that there's a hesitancy to engage in lament is not only because of the kind of the negativity that we perceive to

be attached to it, but also I think there's something that's directly connected with the gospel as well. This is my theory anyway. because lament necessitates us to have the confidence to speak to God in this very blunt, direct, honest sort of way, then we must know and believe that the God to whom we speak is pleased with us and is not going to reach out and club us over the head when we speak to him that way now if I believe that God is a kind of hard-hearted hard-nosed legalistic judge then I'm not going to have the confidence to come before him as a father and say how long and why

and where are you but if I believe that God is pleased with me in Jesus Christ and that nothing is going to alter that then I have that boldness and confidence to appear before him as a child before his father saying, why are you letting this happen to me? And how long is this going to go on? And where are you? And why is all of this transpiring? So there is a direct correlation, I would argue, between the preaching of the gospel and the prevalence of lament. The more that people hear the good news that God is pleased with them in Christ, that there is no condemnation for them in Jesus Christ, the more they're going to have this understanding of God as a father that they can actually come to with lament as well as rejoicing because he's already

pleased with them and he's not going to be angry with them if they open up in this very honest sort of way about what they're going through yeah okay so that's kind of a lengthy introduction but i think hopefully a helpful introduction to what's going on here with with david's lament this is we're told in verse 18 of 2 Samuel 1 that it's written, so this lament is going to be recorded, written down in the book of Joshar. This is the second time, I believe, that we've encountered this. This book, this lost book, is also referenced in Joshua chapter 10. I've encountered a few people on my video I put out about Melchizedek, has a lot of comments, and more than once, I think three or four times, people have referenced me to the book of Jashar as a

resource that I should have consulted. It turns out there's a fake copy of the supposed book of Jashar that is out there that somebody has kind of made up sometime in the 1800s, and that is evidently the book that they're referring to. So if you come across that, please do your research, discount that we know absolutely nothing about the book of joshua except what's recorded in the old testament that yeah it once existed and now it's now it's lost so if i'm sure if if if you had an authentic translation of the actual book of joshua i'm sure you would have referenced it yeah right right exactly so uh this is the way it starts out it's uh it's relatively short It starts out with, your beauty, O Israel, is slain on your high places.

How the mighty have fallen. This can be translated a couple different ways. That word that's translated as beauty or also as glory in the ESV can also mean gazelle. It's the exact same word. This is not your typical word for glory, which is kavod in Hebrew. This is a word that can mean glory, beauty, but also can mean gazelle. And I think maybe there's a double entendre here. I actually lean toward more of it meaning gazelle, because notice it says, is slain

on your high places, and gazelles were associated with being able to walk on those high places. And gazelle is actually a word that's often used to refer to someone who is a warrior, which is a reference like we have in 2 Samuel chapter 2, to one of David's warriors, he's referred to as a swift-footed gazelle. but either way whether it's beauty or glory or gazelle this is talking about it's the personification of jonathan and saul these warriors who were slain on the high places the mighty ones who have fallen so he starts out by reference to these two these two warriors being killed yeah and that phrase uh how the mighty have fallen that might be a phrase that

you've heard before this so that's one of the one of those things in the bible that has been taken by the culture and just passed around there this is a this is a biblical phrase how the mighty have fallen but it's probably something you've heard in movies and you've read in in books and poetry and stuff before but this is uh how it originates yeah there's a number of these biblical phrases that work their way into everyday speech and people who use them often don't don't realize their uh their original source so that's where that's where this comes from actually it's going to be repeated in uh in this this lament on the last stanza as well how the mighty have fallen and then he proceeds verse 20 to uh say tell it not in gath which was of course one of the

philistine cities publish it not on the streets of ashkelon so gath and ashkelon being two of the cities in the pentapolis of the philistines lest the daughters of the philistines rejoice lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exalt now you'll hear here this this uh parallelism in poetry that we're going to encounter over and over especially as we move into more of the poetic books parallelism there's various kinds of parallelism but a lot of times you'll have the same idea repeated in different stanzas so tell it not in gath publish it not in the streets of oscalon parallelism lest the daughters of the philistines rejoice lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exalt so you can hear the parallelism there that's so typical typically hebrew poetry does not rhyme

there are occasional rhymes but don't think of it as kind of the traditional english poetry not modern but traditional english poetry we have a rhyming feature or like the hymns that we sing in church or songs we sing in church we have rhymes that's not the way that hebrew poetry works it works mainly by the use of this parallelism parallelism of various sorts this is called synonymous parallelism because the phrases are relatively synonymous sometimes you'll have what's called antithetical parallelism where one phrase will state something and then the opposite of that will be stated the antithesis of that will be stated in the opposite in the the second part of it now interesting i pointed this out before but i want to point it out again

in case you've forgotten or didn't hear it the first time it says to publish it so tell it not of Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon, or as a new American standard has, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon. The Hebrew verb is basar, and basar is the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek word meaning evangelize. So to evangelize, of course, we know meaning to tell the evangel, to tell the good news, to publish the good news, proclaim the good news. In Hebrew, that would be to basar. To basar is to publish, proclaim the news. Now, most of the time, it's good news, and this good news is related to the defeat of the enemy and the victory of your people. Now, I think that's important to keep in mind when you're thinking about the

Old Testament background of evangelism. Evangelism in this Hebrew style is basically saying the enemy has fallen, the enemy has been vanquished, and Christ our Lord is victorious. So from this perspective, to basar or to evangelize is to proclaim a victory. And of course, it connects us directly to the victory that we have in the resurrection, the resurrection of Christ. Here, David is saying, put a blackout on the news. Don't let the Philistines know about this, because we don't want them rejoicing over this quote-unquote good news that they receive about Saul and Jonathan's defeat yeah this could just as easily say tell it not in gath gospel this not in the streets do not share this gospel in the streets yeah do not share this philistine version

of the gospel in the in the streets of Ashkelon then he shifts he's constantly in this lament he's like turning to address various things of various people so it it is as if we're it is as it were as if david is turning to like face the area of the philistines and saying hey don't let this happen there and now he's going to turn and he's going to face some geographical features but also well also this this also tells you that david really does have he really has no idea about what has happened since saul has fallen because obviously the philistines know about this when they took the body and i mean he obviously doesn't have this information but what it does tell you is that david is not if david had his way they would not

they would never know about this yeah yeah like keep it completely from them because of course he doesn't want the enemy rejoicing or taking advantage of this lack of leadership in israel then he goes he turns and addresses the mountains of gaboa you mountains of gaboa let there be no dew or rain upon you nor fields of offerings for there the shield of the mighty was defiled the shield of Saul, not anointed with oil. It seems to be a fairly widespread tradition in the biblical world that if there was like the death of a leader or a hero, there was this idea that the place where they had fallen should, as it were, suffer almost in lament for the death of this leader. And so in this case, it's the mountains of Gilboa, which is where Saul died.

So Saul was killed in a battle on these mountains of Gilboa. And so David turns to these mountains and says, more or less, I want you to dry up. I want you to experience a drought so that you may kind of lament, we might say, through this drought over the death of the king of Israel. And then he uses a very colorful image here in the latter half of verse 21. for there the shield of the mighty was defiled shield of saul he's talking about then he says not anointed with oil now in this in this particular time period probably the israelites use shields that would have been covered with one or more layers of leather not metal shields probably but leather shields and they would have they would have smeared or anointed these shields

with oil probably to preserve the leather as well as to make them look nice as well as to kind of shine because they were glistening with this oil but david is also using this in a metaphorical sort of way when he says the shield of saul not anointed with oil of course you can't help but hear also the language of saul who was anointed with oil he was messiahed that is to say he was anointed as the leader the anointed leader of israel and now this anointed leader his shield the weapon by which he defended israel and defended himself now lays unanointed in in the dust so it's a very it's kind of it's a memorable image or metaphor for the death and the fallenness of the lord's anointed verse 22 he continues this he with with more kind of metaphorical language he

says the blood of the from the blood of the slain from the fat of the mighty the bow of jonathan turned not back and the sword of saul returned not empty this is like uh this is the idea of like your your weapons are these beasts that are devouring so the bow and the sword are drinking the blood of the slain and they're eating the fat of the mighty so it's a it's a pretty graphic image of the weapons devouring the bodies of the ones that they're fighting against this is an interesting way of saying that david does not believe there's any chance that uh that saul and jonathan went down without a fight there's there's no chance that they did not take out a bunch of guys with them yeah they may have fallen but they a lot of others fell before they fell

yeah this is i mean this tells you i mean david or saul and jonathan we know are both capable fighters and uh i'm sure i'm sure david knows that uh there's there's no way that these guys just got overrun and didn't it didn't do any damage yeah well you don't remember one of the first times we meet jonathan is when he and his uh armor bearer take on those philistines they climb up that cliff and they take on they're they're vastly outnumbered but they're able to to be victorious there so you know that both saul and jonathan yeah they're they're not novices they're experienced warriors who would have taken down plenty of the enemy before they themselves were killed yeah it also tells you that david recognized this as we've every as

we've mentioned before about saul and this is certainly true of jonathan too from the things we know of him but uh david also knows that that neither of these men are cowards so they they were not uh you know they were not hiding or in retreat or anything like this this is david knows Saul and Jonathan better than that. Yeah. We have an interesting switch here from what we'd expect in verse 23 about the description of the relationship between these two. Now we know, if you've been listening to the podcast all through First Hamlet, you know about the rocky relationship between father and son, between Saul and Jonathan. And we see that actually pretty early on when Jonathan inadvertently violates this stupid vow that Saul made all the soldiers take

about not eating on the day of battle and then jonathan kind of utter some some heated words about his father's uh silly vow that he made everyone vow and then of course as david enters the picture we have more and more of a rift between these these two rift between these two over over the over the case of david but when david sings about them he ignores all that he He says, Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely, in life and in death, they were not divided. They were swifter than eagles. They were stronger than lions. So there seems to be, in this case, what we often see with the death of someone.

There's an accent on the positive rather than the negative. David, as it were, is going to overlook all of the divisions that existed between father and son. and he's going to think about them as united, both in death as well as in life. Yeah, and I think that there's, I mean, Jonathan and Saul certainly have their issues. The fact is that they do die together fighting the enemies of Israel. And I mean, David is recognizing this, that whatever else is going on or has gone on between them, they have no reason to believe that Jonathan and Saul were not united in this cause. Yeah, and I think that's important to emphasize.

They certainly had their differences, but one thing they never differed on was the fact that they were Israelites and that Saul was the anointed one of the Lord, even though both of them, both Jonathan and Saul, admitted explicitly that David would be the one who would be king afterward. They also both knew that Saul was the king, and so as long as he was the king, he was the one who was going to defend Israel to the death.

so in verse 24 david shifts once more so he's addressed philistines he's addressed the mountains of gilboa now he's going to address the daughters of israel he says weep over saul who clothed you luxuriously in scarlet who put ornaments of gold on your apparel this is pretty common old testament language to call upon the the women of israel to weep to lament over the situation whatever that might be of course the death of saul and jonathan here and using language which suggests that saul was not only a good defender of israel but they actually helped out the i guess the financial situation of israel i mean he clothed you luxuriously in scarlet he puts ornaments of gold on your on your apparel so in other words you know whatever you want to say about the the

kingship of Saul, he did do good things for the people of Israel. Yeah, and David here telling the daughters of Israel that they're going to need to stop singing about him for a minute and weep over Saul, right? Right, yeah, yeah. We need to, the Saul has slain his thousands, David has tens of thousands, that song, we need to shelve that for a while. We need to lament over Saul instead of rejoicing over David. Verse 25 says, how the mighty have fallen in the midst of battle. Again, repeating that kind of same line.

Jonathan lies slain on your high places. And here the focus is going to remain on Jonathan in this next verse and a half and not really on Saul. Jonathan lies slain on your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan. Very pleasant have you been to me. Your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women, how the mighty have fallen and the weapons of war perished or the weapons of war lost.

This repeats the language that we have heard more than once concerning the deep and abiding friendship of love that existed between David and Jonathan. sometimes this will be read this over the last i don't know 20 30 years some have tried to find some kind of erotic uh overtones here but what this is expressing is nothing more than the kind of friendship that does and can exist between two men especially two men who have shared the kind of experiences that david and jonathan have had these are both military men they're both warriors they fought together they bled together and the bond that they have which which what which happened early on you remember right after david killed goliath then jonathan gives to david his

his armor so this this friendship between this much older man and and david is a friendship that is closer they're they're they're more closely knit together in this male friendship david says than he is with with his wives all right well that's a that's the lament of david You read through that thing a couple of times and read through it, remembering exactly the kind of relationship that Saul and David had. These are generous words for David to say of Saul, and especially words that he it's not just that, you know, this isn't some some kind of pious thing that David's doing. And he's like, I'm going to say this stuff in front of my men. But this is what he wants Israel to think of Saul. This is why he has it written down. This is why he says to share this with other people.

This is how he would like the people of Israel to remember Saul. That's a pretty big thing. It is a pretty big thing, especially given everything that we know about Saul from 1 Samuel. When it comes to our remembrance of him, let it always be tempered by what David says, in other words. and no one's overlooking the fact that he messed up big time that he did a lot of bad things said a lot of bad things no one's over no one's denying that but rather what david is saying hey when we when we sing about saul this is what we're going to sing yeah because we know as as we learned from earlier in first samuel we know that on the day of his death saul went to join samuel right

he was he's with samuel now he's he's not with the damned he's not somehow going to be uh eternally punished. Instead, he is with the prophet of the Lord. And so when David wants to remember him, he remembers him as one who was mighty, as one who gave his life to lead Israel and to shed his blood on behalf of the people of God. Yeah, and as we said before, I mean, you can say a lot of negative things about Saul, but I think that sometimes all those negative things, they color the good things about Saul, which we've mentioned, his fidelity to Yahweh, and the fact that he is a guy who over and over and over again fights the Lord's battles, right? I mean, without hesitation. Yeah, as we'll see, and as we've remarked before, as we'll see, when you compare Saul to the rest

of the kings of Israel, besides David, he comes out looking pretty good. I mean, on the scale of kingliness and godliness and devotion to Yahweh, I would rank Saul among the top five kings of Israel, without any hesitation whatsoever. Yeah, a king who had maybe more reasons to seek out other gods and doesn't ever even consider it. He doesn't even flirt with other gods, even when he can't get a word from God. You have other kings that are just, they can't wait to go you know mess around with another god and saul has reason to think that maybe maybe another god could be helpful to him right now because uh god doesn't seem to be communicating with him and we have no reason to think this is ever an option for him yeah he's a

he's a man of yahweh to to the very end and speaking of yahweh uh moving into chapter two uh we switch to david inquiring of yahweh knowing what to do next so you know he's found out that saul's dead and so he's got a he he's been anointed of course and so he's got to make a plan as to how to proceed from here but he doesn't want to do anything until he's found out what god wants him to do so that's the way the chapter begins david inquired of the lord probably through the sacred lots, the Urim and Fumim. What shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah? Go up is the verb that occurs about four times in these next four verses. And the Lord said to him, yes, go up. So David said, to which place or to which city shall I go up? And God responded to Hebron.

So we have this back and forth questioning using the sacred lots to determine what God wants David to do. So that's what David does. David went up from there, meaning probably from his city that he had been given, Ziklag, by the Philistine king. So he leaves there and he's going to leave there for good. So he's going to depart from the Philistine territory for the rest of his life. He leaves there. He takes his two wives, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel. And he brings up his men who were with him, everyone with his household. And they lived in the towns of Hebron. Hebron, you may remember, if you have a good memory from way back in the Pentateuch, Hebron was a city associated with Abraham. Abraham purchased the burial plot

for his wife that became the burial plot of Israel, and that was near Hebron. Hebron was also mentioned in the book of Joshua. It was the city of some of the giants that were conquered by by the israelites and that became then part of the territory of judah it was allocated to the tribe of judah and of course this has been a city that david has been connected with he's sending gifts to hebron he is making sure that the people of judah and the people of the city of hebron as well as other cities know that he is being faithful to them that he's he may be living outside the land but he's faithful to the israelites of the land so they go to hebron the men of Judah came, and there, that is in Hebron, there they anointed David king over, not Israel,

but it says king over the house of Judah. So at this point, we know that David was anointed secretly by Samuel way back in the beginning of when we first met David in 1 Samuel. He was anointed by him, and that was the last anointing that we heard of. David's anointed this whole time, and presumably a few people knew of this as well. It was becoming obvious even to Saul and Jonathan that David was going to be the next leader of Israel. But there'd only been this one kind of secret prophetic anointing, and now we have the second anointing that's going to take place. So it's sort of a three-stage process. Samuel secretly anoints David. Here, the men of Judah, anointing David as king, and then later on in another few years, he's going to be proclaimed

king over all of Israel. So there's kind of this three-stage process, which interestingly, I think you could find a pretty good parallel with that in the life of the son of David and the life of the Messiah as well. I mean, we do kind of have these stages, I guess maybe that's the best term to describe it where you have for instance you have uh the baptism of jesus so he's publicly at least around a few people publicly receives this anointing of the spirit the spirit comes down upon him of course from the heavens you have the voice of the father and then you have the voice of john the baptist declaring him the lamb of god who takes away the sins of the world right yeah yeah so you have both divine and human witnesses declaring that he is he's the sin

bearer he's the son of god he's the one that you should listen to but then you have and you kind of compare that to david's anointing in the in the city of bethlehem but then you have over the course of his ministry this growing both awareness and confession on the part of some people and maybe awareness or maybe a lack of awareness but certainly opposition to him being the side messiah you have that growing throughout the ministry of jesus and that parallels what's happening with David too. I mean, David's anointed, Jesus is anointed, and yet it's not as if everybody stands up and says, hurrah, you know, here's the anointed one of God. You know, you've got this long-standing antagonism, this war basically between those who believe and those who do not

believe, this growing antagonism toward the Lord's anointed. And then you see that in the life of David, you see this in the life of Jesus as well. And then you have, of course, the eventual event of David taking the throne, which you also have with Christ himself, except his throne looks a lot different than the throne of David. His throne is the cross itself, or in John's gospel, especially, this is where Christ takes his throne and reveals his glory. It's on the cross itself. And then, I mean, I guess you could say the parallel to that third aspect would be when Christ takes a seat at the right hand of the Father. My point is that you kind of have the same gradual revelation of the Lord's anointed in the life of David as well as in the life of Jesus. And interesting, too, I think this is worth pointing out.

So it says here that the men of Judah came and they anointed David king over the house of Judah. So did the men anoint him or did God anoint him? This is one of those yes kind of questions, right? So he is the Lord's anoint. He's not Judah's anointed. He's not the men of Judah's anointed. He's not the anointed just of one tribe. Instead, he's the Lord's anointed.

And yet, how does the Lord anoint him? Well, the Lord uses people to do that, which is, of course, the same kind of theological theme that we see scattered throughout the scriptures. God is the one who does this. He puts David into office. And yet, how does he do that? Well, he uses people to do that as his means, as his instruments, just like he used John the Baptist to baptize Jesus. uh he's always using people to carry out that which he desires for for his people yeah and that is about 40 minutes right there man so yeah good place to stop well uh because we'll see in the in the rest of the chapter that uh we have this kind of growing it begins as a small skirmish between the uh those who are on david's side and those who are against david but that's going to escalate quickly. Yeah, and we're gonna get to see David's appreciation for the men who went

and retrieved the body of Saul, and he thinks that this is no small thing. Yeah, yeah, it's a smart move. Yes, yes it is. All right, well guys, David has been anointed at least king of Judah, and it'll be a little while before the rest of Israel comes around. We will walk that path with them as we continue through 2 Samuel. Chad, I'll see you next week. All right. See you then.