40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Samuel 21:1-22 (Episode 285)

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

Chad and Daniel discuss some stories from David's past added to the end of the book. How will he deal with a famine in the land and a request from the Gibeonites to turn over 7 sons of Saul for execution? What happens when you come up with your own atonement solutions? And David's men are pretty good at slaying giants. 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 make sure you go to the events page and register for the here we still stand conference in las vegas nevada it's a two-day event october 15th and 16th we'd love to hang out with you uh it's gonna be a good time chad will be there i'll be there get some lunch with us on saturday that's included in your 65 registration yeah limited time to to do that it's

coming up in just a few weeks and uh if so if you're if you're in the local area there or within driving distance make sure you don't miss it and come hang out with us chad is weird we in some ways it felt like we sort of ended this whole thing we should be going into a another book but we're not we're still here we got a couple chapters left in second samuel and we're gonna just hear some stories it's like when someone writes you know a series of books that has is one story long and then they write like another book and it's just got some tales that were going Also, here's some things that were going on that we skipped. And that's kind of what we're doing here.

This is just going back to some other period. Yeah, it's sort of a et cetera, right? Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention a few things. Let me tack them on here to the end of the scroll. I mean, there is definitely some cohesion to these particular chapters, which are 2 Samuel 21 through 24. There is some cohesion to them. But you're right.

I mean, they don't fit within this kind of linear telling of the story. A lot of this stuff happened way earlier. I mean, even when we get to the next chapter, 2 Samuel 22, that's the famous Psalm of David. Well, judging by the language of this particular psalm, it happened. He wrote this way back, like right after Saul's death, when God rescued him from his enemies. And it's kind of a miscellaneous, too. you've got the one we're getting to today, a very, very strange story where you have a bunch of guys killed for the sins of their father. Then you get to all these kind of military details of

what some of David's men did. Then you have the psalm, then you have some more exploits of David's men, and then you've got some more poetry. So it's kind of a mixed bag here at the end. And so if we jump from chapter 20 of 2 Samuel all the way to 1 Kings, then it would be a seamless story. But we have all this added for various reasons that we will get to as we work our way through it. But this first one is in some ways the strangest of these particular accounts in these appendices to 2 Samuel. And it begins with telling us that there was a famine, famine in the days of David. again we don't know exactly when this happened but presumably this was maybe oh i don't know say the middle of his reign something like that just guessing but there was a famine for not one

not two but three but three years so what's going on i mean it's just kind of weather related or what's happening david wants to know so we're told that he sought the face of the lord probably it wasn't simply that he prayed but this was uh judging by the the hebrew expression here this is like if you if you seek the face of the king a human king then you actually appear in his presence and you make a request or you place uh a uh some kind of situation in your life before him for for for an act of judgment so this is some sort of official probably ritual appearance that David makes before the Lord, asking him to tell him what's going on. So through his prophet or through his priest to explain why this famine has not abated,

but has been going on for three years. Seeks the Lord's face. And here is the Lord's response. So I don't know why they waited three years to find this out, but they did. The Lord said, quote, there is blood guilt on Saul and on his house because he put the Gibeonites to death. Now, you might be saying to yourself, hey, I'm a faithful listener to this podcast. I was there with you in the beginning of 1 Samuel, all the way through the story of Saul, all the way through the story of David, and I don't remember this incident.

Well, you can be forgiven for not remembering this incident, because guess what? We don't either, because this is the only place in the entire Bible where this is mentioned. so this is one of those uh i guess skipped over episodes for for some reason in in first hand and we're never told this this happened we're not saying it didn't it just that it's not not recorded yeah and don't really know why it happened either yeah yeah we don't know why it happened either i mean uh we're i mean it's given we're given kind of a generic reason uh in verse two that he did this in his zeal for the people of israel and judah but that doesn't tell us anything. Saul was a very zealous dude. So he did a lot of things out of Ezekiel. So a couple

of questions. The first one is, what does it mean there's blood guilt on Saul? Well, it just means that he's done something which is wrong. He has shed blood. And so this guilt of this bloodshed, this murder, this massacre evidently that he committed is on him, but not just on him, but also on his on his house the only problem is at this point Saul's dead so how do you how do you deal with this the second question who are the Gibeonites to answer that you have to go all the way back to the book of Joshua Joshua chapter 9 is the setting here is the Israelites have entered into the promised land across the Jordan they're beginning to conquer peoples They conquer Jericho, of course, they conquer Ai, and the people of Gibeon, as well as some other towns around there, they make a political decision.

They say, you know what, it's pretty obvious that these people are going to conquer us, judging by their past accomplishments, so why don't we just basically pull a ruse and trick them? so they dress up like they were from a foreign country uh just you know long way off they showed up you know their their wineskins are old they have breadcrumbs in their saddlebags they pretend like they've been on this long journey and they seek peace with the people of israel so the israelites even though they're a little bit doubtful at first under joshua's leadership they say okay we'll make a treaty with you and uh that's that's that they find out afterward these people actually are living in the land. So what they do is they say, all right, we've made a treaty with you, made a pact with your covenant, and we can't harm you, but we are going to make

you our servants. And so that was kind of the perpetual status after that. But they can't put them to death. That's the key element here. They've made this pact before the Lord, they made a treaty with them. And so if they violate that treaty, then they have shed innocent blood. And that's exactly then what Saul does sometime during his reign. He put the Gibeonites to death. And as a result, God responds to this by a famine that is upon the entire land. So what do you do? That's really the question here. You can't punish Saul. Saul's long gone. So what are you going to do? Well, the king called the Gibeonites, that is David. David called the Gibeonites spoke to them. The Gibeonites, we're told, were not of the people of Israel, but of

the remnant of the Amorites, which I was just explaining. Although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them, Saul had sought to strike them down in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah. The only thing I can think of is perhaps Saul was thinking, you know what, So these people are descendants of the Amorites, Canaanites, these people who had polluted the land. And so I'm going to go ahead and just completely root out all traces of the Canaanite influence in the land. Maybe that's what it means by in his zeal he did this. But again, we don't know. So David says to the Gibeonites, what shall I do for you?

and how shall I make atonement interesting choice of language there how shall I make atonement that you may bless the heritage of the Lord the whole sentence is a little strange I mean not the first question what shall I do for you that kind of makes sense but David wants to make atonement and that is the typical Hebrew verb kafar that's used to describe atoning sacrifices it's the root of the uh the day of atonement yom kippur so kaphar or kaphar is to make atonement so how am i going to make atonement that you may bless the heritage of the lord again that seemed these kind of odd language why is he asking these gibeonites to bless the lord's inheritance that is the people of israel do you i think that if this that you can that these exact words are fine to say he's

just saying them to the wrong person i mean so if god says oh well there's a famine because uh saul did this thing and then it says and then david inquired of the lord what shall i do for you and how shall i make atonement that you may bless the heritage of the lord that would have been appropriate yeah like what do i need to do to make this up so that you can you know you can end the famine and start to bless your heritage again we are your heritage after all so it's wild that he's asking not just not the Lord about this, but some unbelievers about this. Yes, yeah.

Yeah, it was the wrong addressee. That's the part that baffles me. So if you're asking God, why is this happening? Then why don't you turn around and ask God how to stop it from happening? That would make perfect sense. But that's not what happens. He speaks to the Gibeonites instead.

so the word you find the addressee is is wrong now the gibbonites respond this way they say basically we don't want any money they said it's not a matter of silver or gold between us and saul or his house so in other words you're not gonna you're not gonna buy us off and this was not uh unusual in the ancient world uh you've probably heard of the the code of Hammurabi these ancient ancient law code and that code as well as some other ancient law codes on occasion did provide for like say you kill somebody's slave did it provide for you to actually pay you're actually you're paying monetarily with silver or gold or some something like that in order to quote unquote atone for what you did so that man that could have been a

possibility kind of lurking behind what they're saying but they're they're they're saying we don't want that then they they sort of it's almost by their denial of what they're about to say next they pave the way for what they really want from david they say neither is it for us to put him any man to death in israel i think what they're really implying here is listen you know because of our status as your servants we can't we can't put anybody to death but you can so it's not for us to do this. We can't do this. It's kind of like, I mean, it's not exactly the same, but it's somewhat parallel to

what's happening in the Gospels, where the Jewish religious leaders can't put anyone to death, but they know that Romans can. Just the way this reads, David's like, what do you need me to do? They're like, well, it's definitely not a matter of silver or gold.

This isn't a matter of you paying us something and us making it better. And we're not we can't put anyone to death. Just by saying that, what you just said is it's not a matter of silver or gold. It's a matter of putting someone to death, which we can't do.

Which we can't do. But you, O king, who have the authority, could do that. So he said after this, what do you say that I shall do for you?

And here's what they say. They said to the king, verse 5, the man they don't even say his name here uh almost like they don't want to pronounce it the man that is saul of course who consumed us and planned to destroy us so that we should have no place in all the territory of israel so that guy who's now dead let seven of his sons be given to us, so that we may hang them, I'll come back to that in a second, hang them before the Lord at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen, and the chosen of the Lord. I can't help but think they just kind of spit that word out. I'm kind of pejorative or sarcastic, you know, that the one the Lord chose.

So what's going on here? Well, part of it's obvious, of course, they want to put seven sons of Saul to death for what Saul himself did. How do they want to do it? Well, the Hebrew is a little bit unclear here. The verb that's used there is used a few, just very few places in the Old Testament, yakah. I mean, obviously means executed, but was this, like the ESV has it, by hanging? Were they put to death before they were hanged, or did they actually die when they were when they were hanged some people think that it means like impaled or even crucified probably not crucified as far as we know crucifixion as a form of torturous execution was invented by the persians so much later but whatever it was i mean the the result of course is obvious they're going to be

executed in some sort of terrible way so that we may hang them now this language is is kind of strange too before the lord at gibeah of saul so gibeah is saul's hometown so just kind of picture what they're wanting to do they want to take seven sons of saul and go to saul's hometown and there publicly torturously execute them right there in you know right there in saul's in Saul's hometown. Now, what should David have said to this? Well, what he does say is, I will give them. This whole story is so messed up on multiple levels.

Yeah, he doesn't say like, well, let me go and inquire of the Lord on this. That's quite the ask. He just says, okay, you know, and maybe you could understand back at this time I mean, things are brutal, and David's like, well, I didn't really want a bunch of sons of Saul running around anyway. Yeah, and some commentators actually do go there. They say, well, this was politically expedient for David. This was a chance for him to get rid of some of his enemies. I don't want to read too many negative motives into what David has done.

but this uh yeah the way this this way this was handled is uh is not the way the scriptures speak of how crimes should be should be taken care of uh for one you know if if there if there is a situation where a person's family is put to death for the sin say of the patriarch well then god does that right i mean we kind of we sort of have that similar situation back in the book of joshua with with aiken's family even though even there if i remember correctly i'm just kind of working on memory here if i remember correctly it's not entirely clear that his family was also put to death could it have been aiken but say they were well that was that was the lord's decision this is not. This is at the behest of a group of non-Israelites asking the king to put to death

the sons of a man who actually committed the crime. So we have in Deuteronomy the explicit language of not punishing a son for the sins of his father, but that's what is about to happen here so david goes about this by picking out those who will and will not be put to death we're told in verse 7 that he spared our friend mephibosheth that we have talked about numerous times that is the uh the son of jonathan and he spared him because the oath of the lord that was between them between david and jonathan the son of saul so he spares this mephibosheth jonathan's that he has been taking care of all these years and that we read about just a couple of chapters ago

where David kind of split his heritage between Mephibosheth and between his servant. But he did take, verse 8, he took sons from two different women. He took two sons from Rizpah, who is the daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, and we have their names, Armoni and Mephibosheth.

So this is another Mephibosheth. So kind of confusing here because you got two guys with the same name. So who is Rizpah? Rizpah, we've actually encountered her before. So she's one of Saul's concubines. And if you remember back in the story of Abner, so after Saul dies, his son, Ish-bosheth, accused Abner of sleeping with Rizpah. That's who that was.

So we've heard about her before. So she's Saul's concubine. She has two sons with Saul. Armoni and Mephibosheth. So those are the first two that are chosen. Need five more. Who's he going to get them from? Well, it takes the five sons of Merav, the daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel, the son of Barzillai, the Maholothite. This particular woman, Merav, she is the one that David was supposed to marry back when he killed Goliath, but he turned that them so now we have seven took these seven sons gave them into the hands of the gibeonites

and they hanged them same verb that's used there that we encountered earlier they hanged them or executed them or impaled them or whatever they did on the mountain before the lord and the seven of them perished together and they were put to death in the first days of harvest at the beginning of barley harvest. So sometime in, sometime in April. So this is, uh, the, the, the, this is the, the resolution that was proposed by the Gibeonites to take care of this. Now I find it interesting that throughout this whole, this whole bloody scenario, never does it say that the Lord was pleased with this. Never does it say that because of this, the Lord took away the famine or sent rain or anything like that. We're going to see that in just a minute, but it's for a different

reason. So my understanding of this particular story is that this was an unjust and unbiblical way of dealing with the bloodshed of Saul from his days as king. Yeah, this is what happens when you try to atone for sins. Yeah, through self-chosen methods. Yeah, this is what happens when you gather a group of people and decide how you're going to atone for something, how you're going to make something right. David does not atone for sins the same way that the son of David atones for sins.

This is certainly true. Yeah. And this is kind of in that same theme that we see often in the scriptures where, you know, you kill my brother, so I kill you or I kill your brother. It's just this ongoing kind of revenge, bloodshed. It's the same thing that's happening here. and i mean you we still see this this kind of thing happening today this idea that you know if somebody if somebody violently uh afflicts my family well i'm going to get back at them by doing the same thing to their family as if that's somehow going to take care of the situation well it's just as if that's going to atone for what they what they did i mean is there any way for you to read this and be like okay good justice okay good yeah everyone can feel everyone can feel good now no there's there's nothing just about this no the whole thing is just riddled

with riddled with problems from the very beginning when david doesn't inquire of the lord to ask what he would would have done and the fact that yeah these these guys who are innocent presumably innocent of the crime of which saul was guilty now they are punished they're punished for it It was years ago, but I guess it was the History Channel. They did a miniseries on the Hatfields and McCoys, which I watched and I think is quite good, actually. But I know that if somebody is like, hey, did you watch the Hatfields and McCoys? If I said yes, they're like, what's it about? I'm not like, well, it's about justice.

That's not what that's about. It's about anything but justice. Yeah. Well, anytime that we decide that we're going to decide what is best for atonement, you can guarantee that what we're going to see happening is injustice every single time. It becomes sort of a, how to describe it, it's almost a mockery of what the crucifixion really is. Anytime that someone decides that through self-chosen methods of atonement that they're going to make atonement happen. It's really saying that God doesn't know what's best for us. We're going to decide for ourselves how best to take care of the forgiveness of sins or

take care of justice or take care of atonement. So what happens after this? This is not the end of the story. We're told that the mother, Rizpah, the daughter of Aya, so the one whose two sons were executed, she took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock. at least that's the way that most translations have this the verb there for spread the hebrew verb for spread is typically used for the spreading of a of a tent curtain so probably what happens here is she takes sackcloth and makes it into a little lean to a little tent because she's going

to live there so she spreads it for herself like a tent on a rock and she just stays there she stays there from the beginning of harvest until rain fell upon them from the heavens probably meaning it was over the the hot dry summer months rain typically is not going to fall until until the fall so she stays there and what what was she doing well she says it says that she did not allow the birds of the air to come upon them by day or the beast of the field by night so this story just keeps getting worse not only i mean it's bad enough that we had an unjust execution by self-chosen methods of atonement. But not only did that tragedy happen, the travesty happened, they left the bodies there. This was against every, not just every Israelite law,

this was against every ancient understanding of what you do with the bodies of those who have been killed like it's like the very worst insult that you could give to the deceased it's a it's to leave them there and let the basically be um carrion just let the birds of the air come and and devour their bodies but that's what they did so not only did they kill these men who were innocent of the crime for which they were punished but they left their bodies there just to rot but thankfully Rizpah is there she chases away the birds she chases away the beast of the field by night

so she is not leaving she has stationed herself there to watch over to watch over them this is quite a thing to do too this is not like she went there that night and she did this for 24 hours or whatever this is probably going on

for a very long time and people are seeing her do this yeah i mean yeah this is not like this is not like hidden this is this is at uh at gibia so people realize what's what's happening here uh observing her doing this day after day after after week after week yeah and we're going to see that it goes on and it's public enough that david's going to hear about it and uh and it's notable because i mean you can't even put yourself in this situation but like what kind of hellish season is this to live through oh yeah yeah i

can't i can't fathom it i mean you're these are your these aren't just bodies these are your sons yeah i mean it'd be horrible enough to to have your sons executed for something they didn't do But now you've got to watch their bodies publicly decomposing and you're out there chasing the birds away and the foxes or whatever else is coming up just to preserve their their bodies from becoming what they would become. Yeah, I mean, it's in which also lets you know that they what she's not what they're not going to permit her to do is to take the bodies away to bury them or to remove them. That's not going to happen. Yeah, that's kind of implied by the fact that she has to stay there and do what she does. So David is finally, as you said, he's sort of shamed into doing something. But he doesn't just deal with these particular bodies.

He goes beyond that. So we're told in verse 12 that David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan from the men of Jabesh-Gilead, who had stolen them from the public square of Beth-Shan where the Philistines had hanged them on the day the Philistines killed Saul on Gilboa. So if you remember that story, that's way back at the end of 1 Samuel chapter 31. So the men of Jabesh-Gilead, they took the body of Saul and then the bodies of Jonathan. And we're told that they brought them back and actually that they burned them. That's 1 Samuel chapter 31, verses 11 through 13. Someone says he took the bones of

Saul and the bones of Jonathan. Presumably this would be the burned bones of these two, but take the bones or the ashes, we might say. So he takes them and he brought them from there, the bones of Saul, that is, and the bones of Jonathan. And then they gathered also the bones of those who were hanged so they're kind of bringing bringing the family back together i suppose they're all they're either ashes and bones but they're bringing at least all of their remains back together in one place and they buried the bones of saul and jonathan in the land of benjamin in zella in the tomb of kish's father and they did all that the king commanded so they're taking the remains of these men who were executed they're taking the remains of jonathan and saul

They're putting them all together, and they're burying them where they should be, in the land of Benjamin, in the tomb of Kish, Saul's father. So they do all this, and now, listen to this. This is the end of verse 14. And after that, after that, God responded to the plea for the land. so not after this self-chosen method of atonement but after what was the right thing was done with the remains of jonathan and saul and these seven who had been executed that's when god finally responded and ended the famine yeah you have to believe that that this it doesn't just imply it I mean, this is pretty explicit that God was not pleased with the way that this was carried out because he didn't have the famine end after this was carried out.

It was only after the right thing was done with Saul. God was not going to end this famine as long as there were seven bodies on public display. Yeah. Yeah. So, the right thing wasn't done to begin with, but after it was all over, God did relent after the remains were treated properly. I don't know what else to say about this story. I mean, it's a terrible story in many ways that's full of bad decisions that hurt a lot of people. But that's what we have with a lot of these stories.

very few things were done right but in the end God makes it right by finally taking away the famine from the land I mean eventually God has two choices he can either end the famine or he can kill everybody

A or B that's it either everyone starves to death or he's merciful these are the options of course he's merciful yeah i mean i that is a characteristic of god even he will take a an unjust horrible situation

full of human mistakes where a lot of people got hurt and somehow he's also going to show mercy in the midst of that situation and provide for provide for the people okay so the the the last part of this chapter is a series which is verses 15 through 22 is a series of military exploits so we're going to switch from famines and executions now to wartime exploits between primarily david's men and some big guys among the philistines so three times in these verses we're told there was war verse 15 there was war again verse 18 there was again war verse 30 There was again war. So these are all descriptions of what happened in these military clashes between David's men and between the Philistines, which tells you again that this was early on. Because we don't hear a whole lot about the Philistines in these chapters that we've been covering up to this point, but we did hear a lot about them early in David's reign.

so to begin with the verse 15 there's war between philistines and israel david goes down with the servants and they fought against the philistines and david grew weary so is he is he older is he just weary for some reason because he's been at battle for a long time we're not told we're just told that he grew that he grew weary and now we're introduced for 16 to the first of the philistines who were killed a guy with a very strange name ishbi benob so ishbi benob is one of the descendants of the giants of course we've heard about giants many times not just in the samuel books but also earlier in books of joshua and the books of the torah as well there were occasional giants that were featured in these narratives and of course goliath was a philistine so among the philistines

there were a number of these big guys so this ishbi benob he's a descendant of the giants he had a uh well your the translations typically have spear we're actually not sure what uh this word is it's a weapon of some sort typically translated as spear but this is the only place it occurs so when you have a hebrew word occurring only one place it's pretty hard to decide exactly what it means, but we'll go with spear. It's a weapon anyway. And it's, uh, again, where the Hebrew is a little bit uncertain here. It says in the ESV that it weighed 300 shekels, literally just 300 weights. So maybe they were shekels. If so, 300 shekels would be about seven and a half pounds. And, uh, he's got a new sword and he thought to kill David. Of course, of course he wants to kill

David, what Philistine didn't want to kill David back then. But our friend, the friend that we have encountered multiple times, the guy who's always ready and eager to shed blood, David's nephew, Abishai, he actually does the right thing. You know, he's always wanting to chop people's heads off. That guy, Abishai, the son of Zeruiah, came to his aid and he attacked this Philistine, Ishbi Benob and kill them. And then David's men were like, nope, you're not going out to battle with us anymore, lest you quench the lamp of Israel. So two things. Probably this indicates that this was later in David's reign. You may remember that when David wanted to go out to pursue his his son absalom after he'd staged the coup david's men david's leaders were like no i

need to stay back uh just let us go so same thing here you're not going out to battle anymore lest you quench the lamp of israel this this actually becomes a a very common phrase that's used in first kings and second kings and chronicles as well to refer to metaphorically to david's David's reign in Jerusalem and his continuing royal line. In fact, it wasn't just until this morning that I realized how many times this particular phrase is used, a lamp or a light in Israel. So this becomes a pretty dominant motif for understanding, at least metaphorically, the light that David and his line are supposed to provide in Israel and then specifically in Jerusalem. Now, curiously, I looked at the Greek translation of that particular word in the Septuagint, and it turns out that the same word is used in Revelation 21 to describe how the New Jerusalem has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb, which is pretty cool. because of course we have a new jerusalem the lamb that is christ of course is the lamp in that

jerusalem probably then reflecting this old testament usage of david being the lamp in israel or the lamp in in jerusalem so kind of a cool new testament old testament tie in there again verse 18 we're told there was a war with the philistines at a place called gob and now we're introduced to Sibachai, who's one of David's men. He struck down Soth, who was also descended from the giants. So that's another victory. That's all we know about that particular occurrence. There was again war with the Philistines and Elhanan, who's from Bethlehem.

He struck down, drum roll, he struck down Goliath, the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. So this is a long, long standing note of contention between people who want to kind of, you know, put all these stories together where there's no contradictions. So, you know, the question that comes up quite frequently is, oh, who killed Goliath? Was it Elhanan who was from Bethlehem or was it David who was from Bethlehem? There's various ways in which this can be resolved. Now, if you compare the parallel to this in 1 Chronicles 20, verse 5, we're told that Elhanan struck down Lami, the brother of Goliath the Gittite. So how do you reconcile these?

Well, there's various ways you can go about this. You can say, well, actually, 1 Chronicles 20 has the more historically accurate version. That's what some people say. You could say, well, actually, there were two guys named Goliath, which is, in my opinion, not out of the question. I mean, we encounter people all the time in the Bible, two different people with the same name. We just saw that with Mephibosheth. Yeah, we got two brothers named Mephibosheth. Yeah, and that's a little bit of a weird name.

And so, yeah, I mean, but it's not hard to see how, I mean, you're working with documents and it says struck down Goliath, the Gittite. All you have to be missing is the brother of Goliath. The only words you need missing from this transcript is instead of just struck down Goliath, you just need struck down the brother of. oh yeah yeah which is very would be extremely short in hebrew and we have examples all over the place where differing manuscripts have missing words so uh that's probably what happened the words just in the centuries upon centuries upon centuries of transmission and recopying these texts that particular uh phrase dropped out that's probably the best way to explain this so oh i know all we know for sure is he's got a big this guy also has a big spear

also a lot of big spears in this story a lot of a lot of big weapons and then to wrap it wrap it up uh we have the strangest character in this whole chapter there was again war at gath and there was a guy we're not told his name we're just told he's a giant he's a man of great stature who has fixed six fingers on each hand six toes on each foot uh and in case you can't do the math we're told 24 in number and he also was descended from the giants so quite quite a character and when he taunted israel jonathan the son of shimei david's brother struck him down these four were descended from the giants and gath and they fell by the hand of david and by the hand of his servants a lot of giant killing going on in the last half of this chapter yeah yeah and uh it's

interesting it's this chapter is it does feel like somebody said well i love i love your book uh i feel i feel like you're missing uh a critical detail and maybe you're just trying to make david look good i don't know but remember when those seven sons had to be executed in public and there was a famine and stuff probably need to keep that also there was a lot of giant killing that was going on and that was pretty cool we've got to have that yeah uh you got to talk about david's guy david was the only one that killed giants like all of david's guys were giant killers so make sure you throw them in and definitely include the guy with you know six fingers that was crazy that's that's how it reads and uh yeah it really it does read kind of like that i mean

especially the guy with 24 i mean yeah six six fingers six toes you got you you know if you leave that out the book is incomplete yes indeed gotta have that in there yeah well that's it man we were out of time for that chapter so uh we will we will pick it up uh again next week uh to get into some poetry so that'll be good for now we'll just have to wait so i'll see you next week see you then