40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Samuel 24:1-25 (Episode 289)

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

Chad and Daniel wrap up 2 Samuel in this episode. God is angry because David numbers the people (even though He told him to). David chooses between three punishments and puts himself in the hands of God. Jesus shows up and agrees further punishment will be deferred. 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 and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. while you're over there you can make sure to register for here we still stand next year now i'm not going to bring this up constantly like i do i'll wait a little while eventually i will bring it up constantly but i'll just bring it up right now just to let you know that registration for here we still stand 2022 the national conference in san diego that we are going back we're doing the big thing the registration for that is open and you probably want to register

before January 1st because that's when the price goes up. So you can get in on the early bird rate. It includes all your food. If you've been to Here We Still Stand, you know what kind of deal this is. So Chad will be there. I'll be there.

You can check out the whole roster. It's going to be a blast. It's a year away. Go ahead and just get that ticket. You can get your room later. You can get your plane later. Grab the ticket. Mark it on your calendar.

We'd love to see you. We just got done, Chad, being out in Las Vegas. It was a blast. Yeah, for the regional event. And that was a lot of fun, man. It was a good time. The great church, great people out there, and went real well.

If you're a listener, which I know that there was a bunch of people out there that are listeners to this because they told me so, it was great to see all you guys. Thanks for coming out. If you haven't registered for the San Diego event, do it, because we'd love to hang out with you again. And today, we're actually wrapping up, Chad, a book of the Bible. We were talking beforehand, our 10th book. It's a great biblical significance that we're doing this.

It's not the 9th. It's not the 11th. It is the 10th book. The 10th book, yeah. The only way it could be better is when it was the 7th book. I guess maybe the 12th book has some biblical significance, too. But yeah, the 10. Nice round number. We're about to wrap up the 10th book.

So we'll make sure we get through it, too. Yeah, we were trying to figure out beforehand what percentage of the Old Testament we've gone through, but i'm not i've never been that good at math so i couldn't i couldn't figure it out quickly but we're making progress let's leave it at that we're making progress right one more book one more book down we're still going to be with you for a couple for several several years yeah yeah hang in there don't yeah we're not going we're not going in retirement until we finish the old testament that's right we got plenty of job security ahead of us for the podcast that's right

Yeah, so we wrapped up last time with this long list of David's mighty men. Of course, we went over those kind of strange episodes that described the various accomplishments of some of David's mighty men. And I think I pointed this out at the end of the last episode, that chapter 23 of 2 Samuel ends with an ominous note, ominous at least to some extent. And it certainly harkens back to some pretty dark days in David's life. And that is verse 39, last verse of 2 Samuel 23, in the list of David's mighty men, says Uriah the Hittite. And then it says 37 of these guys in all. Of course, Uriah Hittite takes us back to the earlier debacle with David Bathsheba and Uriah and Joab and the army and everybody else who was affected by this. And we have, to a large extent, been following the ripple effect of what began on the rooftop the day that David saw Bathsheba.

We've been following those ripples all the way through the rest of the book. Now, I like the way that whoever put this book together, the way that they put his name at the end, because by hearkening back to that negative episode in David's life, it acts as a segue to what we're going to cover in this final chapter, chapter 24. second Samuel, because we're going to see once, once again, David's going to sin, he's going to mess up. And this is in a different sort of way. And there's some ambiguities here to exactly why David, why, what David did was wrong, why it was a sin. We'll talk about that in just a second, but clearly what he did was that which angered the Lord. And there was huge, huge consequences, bunch of people dead as a result of not just David's actions, but also Israel was implicated

in this as well. So anyway, that's the way 2 Samuel 23 ends with Uriah, and now we're going to transition to this final chapter, which begins this way. I'll just read these first couple of verses. 2 Samuel 24. Again, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them saying, go number Israel and Judah. So there's gonna be a census in other words. So the king said to Joab, the commander of the army who was with him, go through all the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and number the people that I may know the number of the people. And then verse three, Joab said to the king, may the Lord your God add to the people a hundred times as many as they are while the eyes of my lord the king still see it but why does my lord

the king delight in this thing but the king's word prevailed against joab and the commanders of the army just kind of leave it there that's about halfway through verse verse four so i guess the kind of the looming question the background here is what's going on here with god's anger and why is God inciting David or what does it mean that he incited David and what's up with the census? Why does David do it

and why does this end up being such a bad idea? And to all those questions, I will answer, I wish I knew. Not a cop out, but there's a lot of ambiguity here because we're not told explicitly

kind of what's in the background of all of this. Well, I think the thing that makes this passage the toughest, is that the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel for unknown reasons. Yes, yes. And that he incited David against the people, saying,

go number Israel and Judah. This is the part that makes it really problematic. Because if it just said that then David decided that he wanted to figure out, wanted to number the people of Israel, you and i would have no problem explaining why the lord didn't want him to do that yeah be a lot easier sure because that's not what it says because he's not supposed to do that but the fact that god incited him to do it makes it makes it a little more difficult yeah it does uh and i don't know that we're going to have an adequate answer to explain exactly what's going on here uh first

of all the anger the lord was kindled against israel well some people explain that as reflecting back on some of these incidents we've covered before, whether it's the rebellion of Absalom or whether it's the rebellion of Shammai after that. Perhaps the problem I see with that is because, as we discussed when we started covering these final chapters, there's a lack of sequence here. These aren't in chronological order with regard to David's life. So we don't know for sure when this happened i mean we can say that it happened after for instance david was king of course and after he had captured the city of jerusalem because he's in jerusalem we can say it was you know at that point after that point david's reign but we don't know exactly when this

happened no more than we know uh some of the other events in these last uh three or four chapters of second samuel so whatever the reason was it was kindled against israel and god was using david in order to bring about this action against Israel. And this, of course, is not inconsistent with the way the Lord works in other parts of the Old Testament as well, in which he will bring about discipline or punishment upon his people or other peoples he uses means, and this is the means by which God does this. So as we've discussed many times, we tend to think of primary

and secondary causes of events, but the Old Testament typically refers to God as the one who does these things. It just attributes it directly to God. So God is the one who prevents a woman from getting pregnant. God is the one who strikes down someone. God is the one who does this or does that. Yes, in reality, there's probably all sorts of other reasons and causes that are used by god but this is the typical way that that the old testament speaks so he says go a number israel and judah and of course we have joab's uh hesitancy he's being rather polite for joab here maybe this was earlier in david's reign before the the frigid relationship between these two developed but he's basically saying listen listen david uh you know may god give you a whole bunch

more people, but why would we want to do this thing? So the census itself is a bit tricky because we do have other censuses. Is that the plural, censi, censuses? I'm not up on my Latin here, but we do have other occasions of a census being taken. Ahab, for instance, took a census in the book of Kings, and then we have a census taken in the days of the wilderness back in the book of Exodus. So I think the real question is, why would David do this? And there's no clear answer given. Typically, now this particular census, and probably most of the time there was any kind of counting going on, the reason was to determine how many fighting men that you had. Because when we get to the end of this census, we're told how many guys there were who drew the

sword that's in verse verse nine so they're they're not just going through like in a census of you know in america and i guess they do this in other countries as well you know how many people in your household blah blah that's not what this is about they want to know how many soldiers they have so chances are the the impetus behind this had something to do with perhaps an upcoming military campaign or some commentators will say well the reason david did this is because he was wanting to kind of pride himself on how many soldiers he had. Other commentators say, well, the reason he was doing this is for taxation purposes. He was getting ready to tax the people. Any or all of those could be the reason. Now, one reason that is often cited, and even Josephus,

the first century Jewish historian, when he retells this story, Josephus says, well, But what David did that was wrong here is he disregarded the law of the Torah back in Exodus chapter 30, which says that any time that there was a census taken, that what was to happen was that there was supposed to be a half shekel kind of atonement money that was given by each of these soldiers to cover their transition from kind of the common state to being involved in holy warfare. and there's no mention of David doing this, and so that was David's sin. He didn't exact the half-shuckle from all these fighting men, as it was said to be done back in Exodus chapter 30. I guess possibly the only problem is there's no allusion whatsoever to this law anywhere in 2 Samuel chapter 24, and you would think that if David did break the law in Exodus 30, that that would be cited or at least alluded to in some way.

Well, it seems like the best I can do here, Chad, is say that the Lord wants to know how many people, I mean, as hard as though he doesn't know, but he's going to have David count up the amount of people that there are in Israel and Judah. The only thing I can see is that David doesn't just number the people, but he divvies them up. He figures out—he doesn't just find out, like, a grand sum of the amount of people,

but he figures out, how many fighting men do I have? And he wants to know some—well, you know, it's sort of, well, as long as we're going to count the people, let's go ahead and figure out how much of this we got and how much of the other thing we got and all the stuff. And that seems to be possibly the thing that God did not like. God may be saying, like, I didn't tell you to do that. i just told you to figure out the population i wasn't trying to you were i wasn't telling you to figure out how big your army could be or anything like that and it seems that you know our buddy joab for whatever reason knows that this is a bad idea yeah he's uh he's very very

cautious about this uh in in in in polite language which like i say is kind of unusual for joab since He typically is blunt with David, but in polite language, he's basically saying, listen, I wish that Israel, you know, were way bigger than it actually is. You know, may this happen, but let's not go counting them. So there is this built-in fear or hesitation around doing this, and rightly so, as we will see from the effects of this particular case. So what's more, you know, we see Joab thinking correctly, not that Joab always thinks correctly, but very often he does. Very often he's actually the guy who has a clear head in the room and not David. And if David would have listened to Joab, a lot of people's lives would have been spared as a result. But he didn't. David once more rejected the kind advice, the sage advice of Joab and proceeded with this.

So we don't know exactly what this anger was. I mean, the reason God was angry, nor do we know precisely the exact sin that's involved. But I suspect it has to do with David acting sort of in a Pharaoh sort of way. And the reason I say this is because there's a lot of Exodus language that's embedded within this chapter. Language of plagues, language of the angel of the Lord about to destroy a whole bunch of people. The imagery of the sacrifice placating the wrath of God, all of these are embedded within the Exodus account. So maybe what's going on here is David's kind of not just had a big head, but he's sort of trying to control things, which is typical king fashion, right? He's trying to get a hold of how many people he has so he can kind of use this army in the way that he sees fit, taking it over, as it were, from God.

It's the best I can do. Yeah, you have to think that it can't be the actual counting because God told him to do it. It has to be a motivation issue. It has to be that David is not doing this simply because the Lord told him to, but because the Lord told him to, now David has an ulterior motive to do this as well. Yeah, because once he knows how many men he has, once he knows how big his fighting force is, then yeah, he might get some unholy aspirations to do something that God has not told him to do. So anyway, as a lead into all of this, what happens next? well the king's word prevails as i mentioned in that first part of uh verse four and so joab and his guys basically go out and they do the job joab takes all the commanders of his army and

they kind of this this big circle route all around israel they go out from the presence of the king to number the people of israel verse five says they cross the jordan which is interesting so they're going into the Transjordan, the eastern side of the Jordan, and they go to a place that's about 15 miles, I believe, to the east of Jerusalem called Aror. I have trouble saying that, like I have trouble saying the word rural. Rural, Aror, however that goes. It's much easier to say in in hebrew but anyway that's where they go um to that transjordan area and then they go north from there working their way up toward gad and jaser they go to gilead and then it kind of just documents it in the next few verses so they go all the way up to dan which is the northern part

of of israel anytime you hear dan of your sheep but just picture of north and south They go to Dan. They go to Sidon, which is along the Mediterranean coast, so they're on the far western side of Israel, to the fortress of Tyre. Presumably, there were, of course, some Israelites living around the city of Tyre, and then they start working their way southward. They go to all the cities of the Hivites, the Canaanites. They go all the way down into the Negev of Judah at Beersheba, and there's our Beersheba reference. So they go all the way north to Dan, all the way south to Beersheba. And it took them a long time. This wasn't just, you know, yeah, it'll take us a week or two, get the chariots all ready to go, and we'll start counting people.

No, this didn't take one, two, three, four, five months, nine months and 20 days, very precise, nine months and 20 days to count all of these people in all of these different places, north, south, east, and west. and they came back verse 9 tells us that joab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to the king and here's how many we ended up with you got 800 000 valiant men who drew the sword and then you have 500 000 men of judah that's a bunch of people yeah so you got these two it's kind of it's kind of strange that already before the division of the land you already have references to israel and judah because of course after solomon's death when rehoboam takes over

that's when you have the split into the northern kingdoms and the southern kingdoms which are referred to as israel and judah but multiple times prior to solomon going way back you have references to israel and judah so these kind of became the the pairing by which all the the holy people all the people of god could be described so 500 000 men of judah 800 000 men of israel and as i mentioned these are not just the people but these are in fact the soldiers and that's the part that's interesting right is that they don't come back and we're not given here's the population we're given here's how big your army could be here's how big your army could be it's pretty it's a pretty garmy i think that they could safely invade egypt or they could go they could

north or they could go uh they could go to to the east i mean they got a lot of options with with that many men but it never happened because of what we are told happened next so this is verse 10. David's heart struck him, we're told, after he had numbered the people. I was curious as to whether David's heart had struck him at some other time. And it turns out this particular Hebrew phrase is only used here and one other occasion back in 1 Samuel chapter 24. So we're in 2 Samuel 24, but back in 1 Samuel 24, this is when David is still on the run from Saul. Saul is still alive. chasing david all over the place and remember saul one time had to relieve himself there was no latrine nearby but there was a cave so he goes into the cave drops his drawers relieves himself

and when he's in there david and his men are hiding in the same cave david sneaks up cuts off the corner of saul's robe and then saul leaves after he's done his business and then in first samuel 24 verse 5 we're told afterward david's heart struck him because he had cut off a corner of of saul's robe so of course in that occasion his heart struck him because he had dared to even come close to doing harm to the anointed of the lord in this case he is the anointed of the lord he is the king and his heart strikes him because once more i guess maybe because the same language is used. It's kind of this idea of desecration. He's done that which is unholy. He's done that which should not be done. And as an action, in the first case, directed against the Lord's anointed.

So this later action is directed against the Lord himself. So he confesses, David said to the Lord, I have sinned greatly in what I've done. But now, O Lord, please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done very foolishly. So he makes his confession. I mean, nothing wrong with the confession. It's pretty straightforward. He's not excusing himself or blaming anybody else. He's said, this is what I've done, and I'm praying that you'll take away my iniquity. So God didn't answer him directly. It's not like a voice boomed down and said, here's what's going to happen. But instead, when David got up in the morning, the Lord sent a prophet, a prophet by the name of Gad. And we've encountered him one other time.

So way back in 1 Samuel chapter 22, we're introduced to Gad. At that particular point, we're not told hardly anything about him. He advised David at one point when he was fleeing from Saul. But besides that, we really don't know a whole lot about him. But he's, along with Nathan, one of the prophets at this time, and he comes to David. He's called here, interestingly, a seer, which is kind of an older term for a prophet. So maybe kind of just some older language used here, or maybe this refers partially to the antiquity of this particular story. Anyway, he's called a prophet or seer.

And he says to David, this is what the Lord says. you got three choices three things I'm going to offer you choose one of them that I may do it to you I'm sure glad glad God doesn't work this way now you imagine preacher shows up at the door knock knock knock hey uh I know you've been sinning I got I got three choices for you and none of these are good these are all bad so uh and it's not like you can't You can't ask for a fourth choice. Here's your choices. So David, Gad says to David, says, okay, number one, three years of famine.

Number two, you can flee for three months before your foes while they pursue you. Or third choice, three days of pestilence in your land. Remember, three days basically of, yeah, some sort of attack, some sort of pestilence in your land. so consider and decide one answer i shall return to him who sent me now that's the choices these are three terrible options uh this choice seems easy though well yeah the choice does seem easy you got first of all you got three years three months three days yeah would you would you rather be afflicted for three years three months or three days

well that kind of narrows yeah that there's not a lot of thought i don't think that that needs to go into this because i'll take three days over three months or three years yes and david has another reason for making the choice that he does it's not just the the uh the shorter nature of the punishment but here's what he says and i i love this i love this confession this is verse 14 david says i am in great distress no exaggeration there let us fall into the hand of the lord for his mercy is great but let me not fall into the hand of man yeah yeah yeah you i mean i think like three years of famine you're like yeah we're not doing that that's that's not good at all but you i guess you could say like well three days of pestilence or three months of having

being pursued by your foes and you could depend on your own strength and say well i did this number the guys i got a lot of guys i mean who's really going to come in here and do that but david decides that he'd rather uh roll the dice with god than roll the dice with men which is probably a good a good idea yeah very good idea now you might be asking well what this three three years of famine what does that have to do with you know wouldn't that would that be falling into the hands of god no because probably what's going on here so if you if your country's in the midst of famine what are you going to do well you got to rely on other people you got to rely on the neighboring countries around you so in that way you're falling into the hands of men also so whether

they're pursuing you or whether they're you know charging you an arm and leg for all the grain that they know you don't have but that you need either way you're falling into their into their hands so he says let me fall into the hands of the lord for his his rahamim in hebrew which is mercy can also be translated as his compassion. Either way, we're talking here about divine love. So let me fall into God's hands, not in the hands of men, because in kind of implied there is their mercy is not great. God's hands, because well, yeah, it's God's hands and it's not going to be good, but at least he's got great mercy. But if I fall in the hands of men, well, the last thing i'm going to expect is mercy from them so given the choice always fall into god's hands because

at least those hands you know are going to be compassionate and merciful so david makes his choice and what happens is recorded in the next few verses so verse 15 15 and following tells us that the lord sent this uh plague pestilence a dev air in hebrew on israel from the morning until the appointed time now what we're not told if this appointed time was the third day uh did god did god lessen the amount of time it's kind of kind of a strange ambiguous language it's used here for the the appointed time so however long it was a bunch of people died we are told that for sure so from dan to bersheba there was 70 000 people 70 000 people who died from this this plague. So the death toll is just kind of mind-boggling trying to imagine what this would

have meant for the people of Israel. Now, I haven't looked at the Hebrew here, Chad. Now, it does say in the English translation anyway that it's 70,000 men, right? And I'm wondering, and maybe you can clear this up, is this sort of the way that Scripture sometimes uses the word men, just to describe people in general? Or is this 70,000 men? Is it telling you that 70,000 men died? It's probably a reference to the men. The word is ish, which is a difficult word for man. I mean, it can be used generically sometimes, just like we use men sometimes, kind of an older English generically, but probably this is in reference to, not to people in general, but in fact to men. Yeah, so, which, you know, sometimes, you know, the Bible will do this, and it'll say,

The New Testament does this too. Jesus feeds 5,000, and it'll say men, and then it'll say plus women and children or something like that. So it's not uncommon for the Bible to only give you the number of the men involved. However, it could be that as David numbers his fighting force, these are fighting men, that those are the only numbers we're given. It seems to be that those are the numbers he cares about, that God has reduced his fighting force by 70,000.

Yeah, I don't seem to know exactly what's going on here. And perhaps this didn't affect women and children at all. Don't know. We're not told that it does. Right, and that's kind of the direction that I lean, just because of the way the story is told. So they count the fighting men, we're given that number. We're told how many men died. So chances are, given the way the story flows,

this was restricted to the adult male population. They were the ones who were. Yeah, that's how I read it, but then I was like, well, you never know with this Hebrew here. It could just be people, but it seems that the story that God says, that's how many men you have? I'm going to reduce your fighting forces by this many just so you know that I can.

Yeah, it's kind of the whole Gideon story, except in this case, people aren't just going home or not drinking water, right? they're actually they're they're dying uh and then we're given this image of verse 16 of the uh the angel or the messenger who has his hand stretched out toward jerusalem to destroy it and the parallel to this in chronicles describes this angel messenger standing between heaven and earth kind of this giant angel figure and verse 16 goes on to say the lord relented changed his mind from the calamity and said to this messenger who was working destruction among the people stop it is enough now stay your hand and then we're told that the angel of the lord now this

is the exact same terminology that we have encountered multiple times especially in the book of exodus regarding the the malak yahweh so for the sake of consistency you know there it's it's easy to say oh well the angel of the lord is a second person of the trinity it's the uh it's the word of the word of god who is appearing to moses in the burning bush or to hagar in the wilderness or who's guiding israel through the uh the wilderness to the promised land but there's no reason to say well that's the son of god and this isn't oh i think i think this i think this most definitely is yeah i mean so it's like i mean i mean in the reason you think you have to do that is because just not not just because you have the angel of the lord which is

as we've interpreted this this in the beginning uh we would say that this is jesus but that david spoke to the lord when he saw the angel by speaking to the angel yeah so yeah so i mean As uncomfortable as this makes people feel, this is actually not inconsistent with even some of the language in the New Testament that refers back to, for instance, the destruction that took place in Egypt on the night of the 10th plague, where there is an allusion to this angel being none other than this messenger being none other than Christ who goes to the land of Egypt. This is another one of these Exodus themes that we see coming up here. so he's standing by the threshing floor of a guy named another strange name ara una i guess is the way that we would say that in english i'm not sure it's uh another one of those kind of easier to say in hebrews but hebrew but around the ara una the jebusite so that's where he's at david spoke to the lord when he saw the messenger who was striking the people and david said behold i have

sin and i have done wickedly so i have i have but the sheep of course referring to the people that he is shepherding as the king these of my citizens my sheep of which i am a shepherd what have they done so please let your hand be against me and against my father's house david is a worst steps word and says listen if anybody needs to be punished it's not all these people but it's me so direct your direct your wrath against me but that's not going to happen either because everything's about to change verse 18 says that gad that is the prophet came to david and said here's what you need to do build an altar so raise an altar to the lord on the threshing floor of this arona the jebusite and that's what david begins to do so david goes up at this message of

Gad and then we have this conversation that happens between the two of them so Arona looks at him sees the king coming he goes out to them he pays homage to them and then they have begin to kind of this back and forth it's sort of a an old style of trying to come to an agreement and we it's very similar by the way to Abraham's bargaining that he conducts with the sons of Heth when he's trying to buy the cave of Machpelah so that he can have a burial site for his family. The same kind of give and take happens in that conversation that happens here.

Because Arana says, what's my lord the king coming to a servant for? And David says, I'm here to buy the threshing floor from you because I'm building an altar to it to stop the plague. And Arana says to David, well, why don't you just take it? I'll tell you what, I'll just give it to you. In fact, here are the oxen.

You can use those for the burnt offering, and here are these threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen that you can use for firewood. So I've got everything here. You can have the oxen, you can have the threshing floor, you can have the wood, do with it what you want. And then he goes on to say, may the Lord your God accept you. David, however, says, no, the only way I'm getting this is if I buy it. I will buy it from you for a price.

I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing. So the bargaining comes to an end. David buys the threshing floor and the oxen for 50 shekels of silver. David builds an altar to the Lord there. He offers burnt offerings and peace offerings. And then it wraps up. The book ends with this. So the Lord responded to the plea for the land, and the plague was averted from Israel.

Now, this particular incident can't simply be viewed in isolation, because it turns out that this is a huge connection to what is to come. How so? Well, we're told, especially in the parallel to this in 2 Chronicles 3, that this particular site is actually on, it's not just a threshing floor kind of around Jerusalem, but it's located on Mount Moriah. And Mount Moriah is the mountain that takes us all the way back to Genesis chapter 22. That's the mountain that Abraham took Isaac in order to sacrifice him. In fact, 2 Chronicles makes that explicit. So you got Moriah in Genesis 22, where Abraham almost offered Isaac, and there was a ram offered in his place.

There was an altar built there. Now you have David building an altar in order to offer sacrifices to avert this disaster. And it's on that exact location, where Abraham and Isaac were, where David is, that Solomon will then build the temple for the Lord. so we have this this this narrative connection between genesis 22 second chapter 24 and then the then the later construction of the temple so this place mount moriah then becomes the place of sacrifice the place of atonement the place where god's wrath is stayed

and there is a sacrifice offered on behalf of people a ram offered for isaac sacrifices offered here to bring about atonement and then sacrifice upon sacrifice upon sacrifice offered in the years to come at the temple all in one way or another to varying degrees preparing for that ultimate sacrifice that is to be offered when christ is christ as the new and the better isaac christ is the ram who takes our place is himself sacrificed within you know the within the visible distance of the temple. He himself won't be sacrificed, of course, on Mount Moriah, but he's sacrificed in Jerusalem, because all of these sacrifices were paving the way for his

sacrifice to come. Yeah, I mean, I think you see this even in David's request. I mean, this is why I think it is important that he is talking to Jesus here, when he says, behold, I have sinned and done what is wickedly, and he says, let your hand be against me and against my Father's house. Well, God relents, and God's hand will be against the one to whom he is talking to. Yeah. Which, by the way, is part of his house. And so God honors this request. But David is saying to Jesus, I've sinned, so how about my house be punished?

And Jesus is saying, your house will be punished. In fact, I will be punished. That will be the deal. Yes. I, the messenger of the Lord, who will become incarnate as the son of David. Yes. I, in fact, will be the one who is punished. And it will be then my body, the actual temple, the actual tabernacle of God, where this takes place.

Yes. Yes. And so, yeah, he makes a sacrifice. But all this is just pointing to the actual judgment of God falling on the house of David later, where the actual son of David is sacrificed for the sins, not just of David and the people of Israel, but the sins of the world. And this is why God can say, that's enough. There's another way. And because of all that, I mean, what a great way, actually, to end the book of 2 Samuel. You've got the connection back to Genesis 22 and Mount Moriah,

and then you've got to look forward to all of that which is to come. You've got Christ there. You've got David speaking of his house and the wrath that has come upon his house, and you have this propitiatory sacrifice that is offered, which is pointing toward the sacrifice that is to come. I'd say that's a pretty good way to end the book. Yeah, it's not too bad. It's not too bad.

And that is it. We have reached the end of not just 2 Samuel, but the end of this episode. Next week, we will get into 1 Kings. We're not quite done with David yet, so this isn't the way that we stop hearing about David. We're going to hear about David's very old age and how that goes down. But we're going to have to wait for next week when we get into 1 Kings. New book, Chad. Very exciting.

Yeah. I can't wait. it's gonna be uh it's gonna be fun let's put it that way uh more some more kind of uh wild stories coming up here about david and then his son solomon yeah all right well we'll see you then