40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Samuel 23:3-39 (Episode 288)

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

Chad and Daniel continue to discuss David's last words and then explore the list of his mighty men. Protect the lentils fields and kill a lion in a pit in the snow. 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. And while you're over there, make sure that you don't go to the events page to register for the Las Vegas event, because by the time this releases, that will have been done. Now, it hasn't been done at the time we're recording this, but I'll bet it was a good time, Chad. I'll bet we had a lot of fun. I bet if you weren't there, we missed you.

I think we can speak as prophets here and say, yes, definitely it's going to be a good time. It was a good time. Good time. Thanks, everyone, for coming out in advance. and by advance. I mean, it hasn't happened yet, but thanks for coming out. But one thing that is true is that by the time this releases, you will be able to go to the events page and register for the event in Northwest Arkansas that's happening in April. If you're interested in that, that was a lot of fun last year. We're doing that again. So we're doing our two-day regional event in April

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Make your plans. All that stuff is now open. All right, Chad, we ended sort of in the middle of David's last words. We cut him off. He was trying to get some last words off, and we said, you're going to have to hang on a little longer, David. You're going to have to hang on another week to get the rest of these words out. yeah i felt like i felt like i was kind of doing him in injustice but hey this is 40 minutes in

the old testament it's not 50 so we had to we had to stop but we'll uh we'll kind of summarize real quick where we're at and then go on with the rest of his last words so this is the oracle of david the son of jesse we're in second samuel chapter 23 that opening verse the last words you almost want to say the eschatological words of david that sense of he's talking here about the last times, the latter days, same phraseology that we have in Hebrews chapter one, verse one, how God spoke to his people of old, but now in these last days, he's spoken to us by his son, the son of David. It's an oracle. It's not just a typical song or prayer or some poetry. This is a prophetic speech. So it's, yes, it's couched as poetry, but it's a prophetic oracle of David. And he talks

about the confirmation that God has given to him, the affirmation he's given to him in this covenant, and it's about the Messiah, who's called the anointed of the God of Jacob. And then he begins to talk about how God's Spirit is speaking by him, his word is, the divine word is on David's tongue, so again, this prophetic nature of David's office. And then in verse 3, he transitions to talking, actually, about the Messiah. The God of Israel has spoken, the rock of Israel has said to me, and then if you remember from the last episode, I tweaked the translation a bit, ESV has when one rules justly over men, and I changed that to what I think is more accurate with regard to the whole flow of this oracle, where it's talking about the one who is ruling justly over men, the one who rules in the fear of God, that is to say the Messiah, who's called the rock of Israel. So, and then we wrapped up with verse four, where we have a couple of different metaphors here.

We have a metaphor that's celestial, and we have a metaphor that's terrestrial. So one of heaven, one of earth, the one of heaven is the idea of the Messiah being like the morning light or this day spring. So he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning. So, you know, we've all experienced mornings like that, where it's a, maybe it's a spring morning. It's nice and clear and crisp, and the sun is shining, and everything just kind of seems just right.

That's kind of the image we have here of the Messiah dawning like this morning light. And, of course, we have this imagery of either the light or the sun applied to Christ, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. He's the son of righteousness, as Malachi calls him. And then, of course, in the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly uses light imagery to refer to himself. He is the light of the world. He enlightens every man. And all of this, by the way, goes back to Genesis 1. So God's first words,

Yehi or, let there be light, and this light dispels the darkness. that becomes the the overarching metaphor for the work of god impacting creation the good work of god impacting creation that becomes that overarching metaphor for the rest of rest of scripture and then the second metaphor that we have is this grass sprouting from the earth so the messiah is like rain he comes down and what happens well the grass sprouts from the earth so you have kind of this combined image of heaven and earth being the recipients of the work of the Messiah. He comes down like light, like rain, and what's the result? You have growth. You have creation springing forth with this life, and these creation metaphors then are used throughout the rest of the

Old Testament to picture for us the saving work of the Messiah. Yeah, it's the contrast that scripture uses so much between light and dark, death and life, that's consistent throughout the New Testament as well. I mean, that Christ is considered light, who is opposed to the darkness, when he comes, what was dead now lives, all of that is not a language that is going away. It even kind of gets snuck into the gospel sometimes in unexpected places. I think it's, You guys are going through Mark in 30 Minutes in the New Testament. I believe it's only in Mark's telling of the feeding of the 5,000 where he makes them recline on the green grass.

Yeah, yeah. I don't think Matthew, Luke, or John mention the green grass. But anyway, they're in the wilderness, so why does he mention green grass? Well, it makes the point that it's a desolate place where there is nothing, and then it says that Jesus began teaching them, and now all of a sudden they're sitting on green grass, and you're like, what is this, what? Yeah, where'd the grass go from?

Well, it's because, you know, this is stock Old Testament imagery that when the Messiah comes, what's going to happen to the wilderness? What's going to happen to the desolate place? Well, all of a sudden, it's going to look like the Garden of Eden. You've got life springing up. You've got grass. You've got flowers. You have this new creation imagery. So that's why you have that image in the Gospel of the Martyrs.

But it just kind of springs up all over the place. Yeah, I know about this desolate place stuff. When I lived out in Arizona, I lived out in Phoenix, but sometimes we would go hiking in a desert and stuff. And let me tell you, it felt desolate and there was no picnic on the green grass going on out there. You weren't reclining on the green grass while you had your bread and fish? Nope. That was not a thing. Yeah. When I go to California, I fly, of course, fly over some of these areas. You look down, you're like, there's nothing there.

they're just like sand and rocks and lizards lizards yeah well my memory uh it's not exactly the same as yours but when i hiked down to the grand canyon years and years ago of course the farther down you get the more you just have dirt and rocks and sand but you get down to the river or you you get down to the creek that flows into the river and on either side of the of the river either side of the the creek you've got just lush green vegetation and there's like this invisible line once you get so far out then there's nothing you go from very lush green to to rocks and sand and anyway that's these kinds of images are of of either sand or flowers or dirt or life are scattered throughout the old and new testament now verse five we didn't get to last time so we're

picking it up now. And David goes on to say, for does not my house stand so with God, for he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure, for will he not cause to prosper all my help and my desire? Now this is, if you remember when we talked about 2 Samuel chapter 7, when God speaks to David, when David wants to build a house for God, this verse harkens back explicitly to that promise that God gave to David. So David says to the prophet, hey, I'm living in a house. God's living in a tent. I want to build God a house so we can have a permanent structure. The prophet says, great, go for it. Next day, the prophet comes back and says, no, here's what God said. You're not going to build a house for him. He's going to build a house for

you. And of course, this house is not a physical structure. Instead, what God builds for David is this dynasty of his descendants who will sit on his throne, but more particularly, it is the seed of David, the son of David who is to come, the Messiah who will sit on his throne. So when David here in 2 Samuel 23 refers to his house, he's talking about this dynastic promise that God has given to him, this everlasting covenant that he's made with him that is ordered, that is secure. I think one of the reasons that we have this language of it's secure, that it's ordered in all things, is because if you've been reading through 2 Samuel, there doesn't seem to be a lot of disorder in those last few chapters. Things seem a little bit insecure with regard to David's throne up to this particular point, because we've got coups, we've got rebellions, we've got all kinds of turmoil happening in the city of Jerusalem and with David's family. So if you look at things from the outsider's perspective, given what we know about the covenant that God made with David, then it's going to be like, I don't know, things seem to be a little bit touch and go here.

So this is his way of saying, listen, God made the covenant. It's going to stand with his promises, an everlasting covenant. And so despite the disorder and the insecurity that was happening from the human perspective, from the divine perspective, nothing changes. covenant remains secure. Then he goes on to talk about, in that last part of the verse, something which I think is significant for the later imagery of the Messiah. He says, for will he not cause to prosper all my help and my desire? The Hebrew verb for prosper here is tsamach. You could kind of write it as T-S-A-M-A-C-H, tsemach. That particular verb often is used as a noun, which is tsemach. And when it's used as a noun, it's typically translated as branch. So just like a branch

kind of springs forth or sprouts forth, prospers, if you will. So this becomes this noun, branch, the semach which is formed from this verb the samach which is translated here is prosper that noun branch becomes this is what all this is leading to becomes another title for the messiah and that occurs quite frequently let me just read you one verse this is from jeremiah 23 verse 5 jeremiah says behold the days are coming declares the lord when i will raise up for david a righteous branch, a righteous tzemach, and he shall reign as king. Notice he's talking here about a branch who is a regal figure, a branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. And this messianic title of branch occurs

also in Jeremiah 33, it occurs in Zechariah chapter 3, and it occurs in Zechariah chapter 6. so several places in the prophets when the messiah is spoken of he's spoken of as a branch and i used to wonder well where does this branch image come from and i think it comes it goes all the way back to these last words of david where he talks about god causing to branch forth if you will to prosper all his help and and his and his desire you see this in uh in hymns i mean where when you when you uh when you see something like that it's called talking about like the rod of jesse or something like this this is this is talking about like the and some well some will say the branch uh of jesse it's just borrowing from this sort of language i mean like

it's going a step back from david and going going to david's father right and basically saying that yeah okay we know that david is you know the offspring the offshoot of jesse but uh but the son of david like the true david uh that's that's the real branch um that's coming off of jesse yeah the tree imagery you see in isaiah uh i think it's isaiah yeah it's isaiah where he talks about this it's kind of a dual image he's the root of jesse meaning he's the divine source of jesse but he's also the branch yes so he's you kind of have the the two natures the human and divine nature indicated there as well but it all goes back to these kind of these tree imagery yeah so it's a weird thing that jesse comes from god but god comes from jesse yeah yeah it's one of those

uh you know those mysteries you can imagine old testament believers being like what i don't quite get this and then at the incarnation you're like oh yes now i get it he's both he's the root and he's also the stem, the branch of Jesse. But if you've ever wondered where that Messianic title of branch comes from, I think it all is traced back to this particular part of David's last words, where he talks about the tesamach, the prospering and the branching of his health and his desire. Last two verses, six and seven, focus on a contrast. So we have this quite frequently in the Psalms, for instance, where like you think of Psalm 1, where you have the imagery of the righteous man, which I would argue is the Messiah there in Psalm 1, this man who doesn't walk in

the counts of the wicked or sit in the place of sinners and all these characteristics of who he is, that is in contrasted. So in Psalm 1, who is the righteous man? He's the one who is like a tree firmly planted by streams of water and his leaves never fade. He's producing fruit all the time. And then what do you have set up as a contrast? You set up this set up as a contrast with the wicked, with the unrighteous. And what are they like? Well, they are like chaff, which the wind blows away. So you have the imagery of life and stability in the tree, producing fruit, green leaves.

And then you have the imagery of instability and uselessness with the chaff, which the wind drives away. So you have these two images of nature set up to contrast the righteous man with the wicked. Same thing or similar thing happens here in the last words of David, because he's just been talking about the Messiah, and he's like rain, he's like light, he's like grass, he's like all of these images of life. Then verse 6 introduces the contrast. It says, but worthless men, this is our word we've encountered multiple times, balial, like the sons of balial, the sons of worthlessness. Worthless men are all like thorns that are thrown away. They're not chaff here, like in Psalm 1, but they're like thorns that, you know, what are you going to do with thorns? You're just going to throw them away.

They can't be taken with a hand, and you don't go around picking up thorns unless you want to get poked. So what do you do? Verse 7 says, the man who touches them arms himself with iron in the shaft of a spear, which is kind of a strange military imagery to use here with gathering thorns. Then it finishes by saying they're utterly consumed with fire. the overall message is that you've got the anointed one of god well what is he like well he's like light he's like the he's like light he's like the sun he's like rain he's like the the the giver of life to grass and then you have him contrasted with these balials who are like

thorns which are just gathered up and burned because they're they're useless and those are those are quite the last words yeah i mean it's memorable so good they're written down for uh for for all of us to read i mean it's and i love that they're that they're called last words because it is as it were giving david one final chance to talk about the promise that was pivotal for his understanding of who his own house was to become and yeah from and who would come from from his house. So they're not the first words of David or the midlife words of David, the last words of David in which he looked forward to who was to come. And in that way, it's kind of like Jacob. If you go back to the ending chapters of Genesis, his last words were about the Messiah

as well. When he blessed Ephraim and Manasseh, his grandsons, he talked about the messenger of the lord uh meaning the the son of god when he was blessing his grandsons and then when he blessed his sons when he got to the blessing of judah who did he talk about the messiah the lion of the tribe of judah so jacob jacob's last words were about the messiah david's last words are about the messiah as well that's a pretty good way to go out what were your last words about oh just talking about jesus that's right it's a pretty good way to go just talking about a promise that i know god's gonna keep yeah uh well i mean what what's better than that now we kind of have a rough transition here i don't pretty hard to segue between the last words of david and what's coming

up here because what we have in the rest of the chapter beginning with verse eight and then all the way through the end are a a gathering of names and towns and and military exploits yeah i gotta I've got to be honest, if I was compiling this book, I would have put what we just went through, the last words of David, that would have been the very end. That would have been the amen, for sure. Yeah, that would have been the end of the whole book. I would have had this, and then what's coming up

in the next chapter before that. Yeah, it is kind of a strange way they organize this. I don't know that I quite understand it. No, here's David's last words. let's talk about the guys that hung out with David for a little bit and then let's talk about something that David did that really irritated God

and you're like man you can't let David go out in this book with these great last words you gotta end with this other thing that he did that is a strange thing about some biblical books you know Isaiah ends with this grotesque image of their worm does not die and their fire is not

quenched and Malachi ends with on kind of a a dark note too so preachers don't necessarily model your sermons after the the ends of biblical books these aren't sermons no these aren't these aren't sermons but that does seem to be a characteristic at least of some some biblical books not the psalms i mean the psalms end with hallelujah basically so that's it's a good way to end well anyway back to this verse eight begins the story of the names of the mighty men the uh in hebrew the the gibberim which is often translated as warriors or something like that so these are the the shemot hageborim the names of

the mighty men whom david had now there is uh if you've been following along with us through the whole life of david especially his his later life you know that one of the guys we've talked about quite frequently is joab and we've actually spent quite a bit of time talking about him because i think he's a significant character and uh one of the glaring absences from the names of david's mighty men is guess mr joab yeah and you look at some of these exploits and some of them are crazy and everything like that but like joab uh did some pretty crazy stuff yeah he did i mean he was the general of the army almost the the entire time now i'm not saying job isn't mentioned but this is the weird thing when he is mentioned it's not necessarily him who's mentioned as his

brothers so his two brothers are mentioned and they're called the brother of joab but there's no recording of hey joab did this great thing joab led the israelites in this great victory joab did this job to that no i just he's mentioned this kind of passing oh yeah you know this was uh Abishai, the brother of Joab. So he's given short shrift. Maybe if you've read this far, you're supposed to understand that Joab was pretty important. Yeah, maybe that's why.

The fact that they could say the brother of Joab implies that you understand who Joab is. Yeah, you know who is being talked about. Well, we have two different groups, basically. we've got uh the three so these are the three that are singled out from the rest of david's warriors and these are this kind of the upper echelon and their names are hard to pronounce the first one is but you can i guess in english you would say it's something like joseb bashebeth yoshe bashebeth and he's the first one identified that's in verse eight

The second guy identified is Eleazar, a little bit easier to say. That's verse 9, the son of Dodo. And then the next one in verse 11 is Shammah, who is the son of Agi, the Herorite. So we're introduced to all three of these guys. And then we're also introduced to what are called the 30 chief men of David. And that is mentioned in verse 13. So keep in mind as you're reading through these names and exploits that you've got two different groups. You've got the three, kind of the upper echelon, the trinity, if you will, of David's mighty men.

And then you've got these 30 other guys that are also mentioned. And there's little narratives attached to some of these, and some of them are just mentioned by name. So what do we know about them? Well, the first one, this Josheb Bathshebeth, he was, we're told, Rosh, which means head or chief of the three. And what did he do? well verse uh eight tells us he wielded his spear against 800 whom he killed at one time it's pretty impressive that's pretty impressive yeah i mean 800 guys with one spear at one time that's pretty yes that's that's quite the battle they can make multiple movies out of that

particular battle scene uh what what else happened well we don't know i mean that's it it's just like that's what he did he had a spear uh and even the language here is a little bit actually tricky one thing i guess i should say is that beginning with verse 8 through the rest of the chapter all these exploits of david's mighty men is just riddled with uh difficulties challenges with regard to the language also because this is also recorded these names and exploits are also recorded in the first chronicles and when you can when you put these side by side you got some differences between these you got different spellings of the names sometimes you have different numbers attached to them so it's it's it's extremely complicated we're not going to

spend time comparing chronicles to samuel because if we did that we could do several episodes just on that particular topic we'll get to chronicles eventually but we're just going to kind of focus here on Samuel. But anyway, I just want to point out it is complicated. There's a number of times when your English translations, if you're checking your footnotes, will actually say that such and such was translated according to the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation, because the Hebrew is just a little bit difficult to discern or there seem to be words missing. And so often what will happen is translators will add to their translation or clarify their translation based upon what the Septuagint did with their translation. Anyway, that's what we know about this guy. Had a spear,

killed 800 guys in one battle. Next to him was Eleazar, and we're told that he was with David when they defied the Philistines who were gathered there for battle. Everybody else takes off, says the men of Israel withdrew, but Eleazar, he rises and he strikes down the Philistines until he got tired, until his hand was weary, but his hand still clung to his sword. So the Lord brought about a, literally a great salvation. ESV, as many translations do, will translate salvation as victory. So brought about a great salvation, a great victory that day. And the men, the men who had withdrawn, they just came back to strip the slain. They just came back for the spoils of war, but all the glory of the battle and the victory goes to this guy named Eleazar.

next verse 11 we're introduced to the third of these three and his name is Shema he is the son of Agi whoever that was the Herorite the Herorites are mentioned a few other places evidently this was the location to go to if you wanted some great warriors and what we what do we know about him well again Philistines are involved here Philistines gathered at Lehi if you remember the story of Samson when Samson killed all those dudes with the jawbone of an ass that was at Lehigh so gather together there there's a plot of ground full of lentils I'm not sure why this is mentioned but it's an interesting detail it is an interesting detail must have been known as the lentil place so I got lentils everywhere it's a field full of lentils uh everybody runs away

again but this guy Shema he takes his stand in the middle of these lentils and he defended it and struck down the Philistines, and the Lord worked a great, again, salvation, or a great victory. Maybe the Philistines were going scorched earth, and they really needed those lentils that David and his men did or something. He said, not today. Not going to be burning the lentil field today. Boy, that does make perfect sense. Yeah, it's probably what was going on. I mean, that was a characteristic of ancient warfare. You destroy the crops of your enemies, so you starve him out more or less so yeah i mean it does say thanks to shema the lentils were saved yeah it does say he defended it and it being the field of lentils so apparently this is what he was

uh he was gonna do he was having lentil soup that night and there was no way this philistine army was gonna stop that from happening not today satan not not today philistines and then we have this uh real interesting story of what these three guys did so this is happening when david of course i should have said this as a preface most of these stories happen way early in david's reign so this isn't like later years of david's life this is most of these are happening when david was still a a young man or at least in the early years of his of his reign so at one point at harvest time david's at the the cave of adullam which we have encountered in the earliest stories of David, kind of a favorite hangout of his. And what's more, the Philistines are the chosen

enemies. You got these Philistines, and they're camped in the Valley of Rephaim. David's in this stronghold, which evidently is close to the cave. And the Philistines have moved all the way from the coast of the Mediterranean, which was the Philistine territory, to Bethlehem. This is a long way. And they've established a garrison there in David's hometown of Bethlehem. So David's close by his enemies the philistines they're in this bethlehem garrison so they've invaded judean territory they've set up a stronghold in in this uh little town of bethlehem and david seemingly just kind of uh i don't know as an aside when he's talking to his guys he's like you know what you know it would really be awesome right now if i had a drink of water from the well

of Bethlehem you know that well that's by the gate man that would be so good right now that's what we're told basically in essence he said he said longingly ah just man that Bethlehem water there's nothing like it wish I had a drink the three mighty men overhearing this evidently kind of consulted together you're like hey David wants a drink from the well in Bethlehem David's going to have a drink in the well in Bethlehem and we're told they broke through the camp of the Philistines somehow managed to draw water out of the well of Bethlehem and carried it and brought it back to David. And David, this is the strange part,

David, evidently not foreseeing they would actually follow through with his desire, refused to drink the water. Why? He poured it out to the Lord, and here's what he said. This is verse 17. Far be it from me, O Lord, that I should do this. Shall I drink the blood of the men who went at the risk of their lives? Therefore, he would not drink it.

So presumably what's going on here is that David doesn't drink the water because he thought it would be, because these men had risked shedding their blood to get this water for David, for David to drink it would be sort of an affirmation of them putting their lives at risk, putting the shedding of their blood at risk. And so that's why we have this image of, I'm not going to drink the blood of these men. In other words, by me drinking this water, it would be like me affirming that they risked their lives, risked the shedding of their blood to get me this water. I've got to be honest. If I'm one of the guys that risked my life to get this water, I'm really going to need you to drink that water.

I would not be happy with David pouring out this water. no i yeah after going through all of that and then watching david just turn it over turn the pitcher over or whatever and pour it onto the ground yeah i'll talk about a downer yeah well then let me drink the water man what's going on this is uh if the water is that good from the bethlehem well then at least give me a taste of it yeah one thing i think is interesting i mean this might not be anything but you know, David's got a bunch of guys, got a bunch of men, and he's got these three guys

that are, you know, kind of set apart. And the son of David also has like a three-person inner circle. So, you know, Jesus doesn't have, he's only got 12 disciples, you know, because he got 12 tribes of Israel. So David, Jesus doesn't go and mirror the numbers because he's got a different number that he's mirroring, but he does mirror the inner circle number of three with Peter, James, and John, which is maybe nothing, but is maybe worth mentioning. I think it's worth mentioning. Yeah, yeah. One of the books that I regularly consult when I'm getting ready for these is by Peter Lightheart. It's called The Son to Me, and he makes the same point that, yeah, you have David had his three, and Jesus had his three as three as well. So I think there is something made

of that and also just i mean it's sort of obvious but it's worth pointing out that david wasn't just kind of a one-man show right he had a lot of people that were beside him just like jesus had his disciples and you could sort of compare this list at the end of second samuel 23 with the whole list of people that paul talks about for instance in romans chapter 16 yeah greetings to so-and-so greetings to so-and-so he went through all these greetings in other words yeah i mean paul did a lot of extraordinary things but it wasn't like he was just a one-man show he had a lot of helpers a lot of people who were his fellow soldiers as he will uh sometimes describe them so uh that's what the three mighty men did and then we're told about a few others too abishai the brother of joab

so the nephew of david we've met him multiple times he's the guy who's always ready to chop people's heads off he wielded his spear against 300 men and killed them and won a name besides the three he was the most renowned of the 30 and became their commander but he did not attain to the three no big shock that abishai should win a name for himself because he was the guy who was always always itching for for a fight abishai is like the guy like peace is the last option for him First option is always the sword. Yeah, I mean, it's not surprising that Abishai has a reputation. Also not surprising that, you know, he does some crazy stuff.

And he's like, yo, can I get in the council? And David's like, no. I already know what your council is going to be every time. Yeah. He's always like, there's an issue. What does Abishai want to do? I say we nuke him. That's Abishai's.

It's always his first option. Well, then we have one more guy here. Not one more, but the next guy, Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, was a valiant man of Kabzeel. We're told that he was a doer of great deeds, which I kind of like. So a doer of great deeds. In Hebrew, that is rav pa'alim. I think we should just somehow insert that into English. Talking about this guy, he was a doer of great deeds. He was a total rav pa'alim. I don't know why that phrase just caught my eye when I was looking through this text.

So Benaiah, he's a rav pa'alim. He's a doer of great deeds. What did he do? This is to be contrast with someone who talks about great deeds, not this guy. This guy was a doer. Yeah, this is the guy. I'm not sure which of the disciples of Jesus he most closely corresponds to, but listen to this.

I think you've got a story about this, Dan. First of all, I've got to kind of clarify something here. So ESV has, he struck down two aerials of Moab. This is a strange translation issue, because if you go to the ESV and you see two Ariels, you'll see a footnote that says the meaning of the word Ariel is unknown. So they just translated it. Actually, it's not unknown. And Ariel is one form of the word for lion. so that it could be most translations actually again bar from the septuagint here and they'll

say he struck down two sons of ariel of moab ariel being then a proper name but ariel means lion and the reason this is important is because the very next sentence talks about how he struck down an ariel a lion meaning the animal itself and uh so he struck down a lion but not just a lion he struck down a lion in a pit and it wasn't just in a pit it was on a day when snow had fallen yeah this is like legendary stuff here right like so you know like it's snowing and you're down in a pit with a lion and you win i mean what kind of crazy movie scene is this yeah so i mean if anybody deserves a title of a a doer of great deeds it's a guy who took out a lion in a pit yeah on a snowy day yeah can you imagine you're like he's telling this story he's like yeah that

i was down this pit and uh there's a lion down there and i had to confront this lion and you know he's going through all the details of how it happened he's like did i mention it was snowing it was snowing everywhere yeah yeah but by the way it was also snowing when this happened so talk about memorable the guy who's remembered for that but that wasn't all i mean he that was as if that wasn't enough he also verse 21 tells us that he he struck down an egyptian who was for some reason we're told a good-looking guy yeah a handsome egyptian this is weird egyptians typically ugly so this guy is singled out as handsome i don't know but he was a good looking Egyptian, and he had a spear in his hand. Benai did not. He had a staff. That's all he had.

But he goes to the good looking Egyptian with a spear, and he snatched the spear out of the Egyptian's hand and killed him with his own spear. This is a very David Goliath-like scenario, by the way. David too boasts of seizing a lion and striking him. And then he also, of course, kill Goliath with his own sword. He struck him first with a stone, but then David chopped off Goliath's head with Goliath's own sword. So Benaiah is sort of a Davidic figure in this way. But he's renowned among the 30, needless to say. Any guy who kills a lion in a pit on a snowy day and snatches the spear from a handsome Egyptian and kills the Egyptian with his own spear definitely deserves to be renowned among the 30.

And David was so impressed that he set him over his bodyguard. His bodyguard probably meaning this group that we've encountered before, the Pelethites and the Karathites. So some pretty significant accomplishments. And then what we have in verses 24 through 39 are nothing but a list of names. Azahel, Elhanan, Shammah, Helez, Ira, Ananon, these names and these places go. Ending, ironically, the very last name mentioned,

verse 39, end of chapter 23, which is sort of, I think, a segue, an implicit sort of segue into chapter 24, which we'll get to next week. The very last name mentioned among these mighty men is Uriah the Hittite. So, of course, everything we know about Uriah and the whole terrible situation with him and David and Bathsheba, we've covered that many times, but that is the way that this ends. It's a reminder, by the way, that Uriah was not just kind of a random soldier in David's army, but he was one of these mighty men, mighty men of David. So that's the list that you have in that latter half of chapter 23, a reminder that David was surrounded by some very, very impressive soldiers who did some very, very impressive things, and that God was using not just this one single man, David, but also his disciples, if you will, his fellow soldiers to accomplish all of these renowned deeds among the people of Israel. yeah and that's it man that we are we are out of time but we did in fact make it through

uh the 23rd chapter so that's good and we are almost done with second samuel yeah i think i think unless uh you know unless something you know we get real uh you know going down some rabbit trails but i think our plan is to try to wrap up uh the whole book of second samuel in the next episode and so it'll be on to well similar things we're not quite done with David

but we'll be on to First Kings after that but we'll see you next week for the conclusion alright see you then