40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Samuel 8:9-9:13 (Episode 267)

Episode Date: May 18, 2021

Some of David's sons become priests. David remembers his promise to Jonathan and wants to show the kindness of God to someone from the house of Saul. The messiness of the church and the love of God are on full display. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Regional Event in Las Vegas 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, make sure you go to the events page because we are going to Las Vegas in October. That's the plan now. October 15th and 16th, we're going to be in Las Vegas.

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Get going on those tickets. We would love to see you hang out with us in Las Vegas. All right, Chad. We left off with David winning a bunch of battles. If you're an outside enemy, he's got you. Inside enemy, a little bit different scenario. But right now he's dealing specifically with outside enemies and is being quite successful. Yeah, he hasn't lost a single one.

And of course he won't for quite some time. It's always the inside stuff that bothers him, whether it's himself or his son or somebody else that's close to him. I was looking ahead to all of the after effects of the coup of Absalom this morning, looking ahead at some of the people that show up in Chapter 9. and man what a mess david's kingdom is it might it might look from the outside if you're an outsider like david can't lose but if you're an insider he is bedeviled on on every side and we'll we'll be introduced to a couple of the characters in chapter nine they're going to show up in those aftershocks of absalom's coup and uh in a few more chapters but for now yeah we're still

in the middle of david winning every battle he went against uh had a dazer as well as some some other folks in the first part of the chapter. Begin with verse 9, which is where we're going to start today. So 2 Samuel chapter 8, verse 9. He makes an ally. It's a guy named, you could pronounce this Toi, it's T-O-I in English, or if you're looking at the Hebrew, it's Toi. But either way, this guy is the king of Hamath, which is in modern day Syria. And he heard that David had defeated all the army of hadadezer that was what we talked about in the last episode so he sent his son guy named joram to david to greet him and to bless him because he had fought against hadadezer and defeated him and the reason was was because this guy toy or toey had himself been at

war with hadadezer they were in the same vicinity north of israel so they were you know warring back and forth with each other so naturally toey was glad that david had defeated his enemy so he sends his son he brings him some riches some silver some gold some bronze and then david takes these and he dedicates them to to yahweh along with all the other stuff he'd taken from their surrounding nations the silver and gold that he had taken from from them and from and then we have a list there in verse 12, from Edom, Moab, sons of Ammon, Philistines, Amalek, and from the spoil of Hadadazer. And I think I mentioned this at the end of the last episode. If not, it was in my head and I didn't mention it. But we see David doing kind of the same thing that the Israelites did when they

left Egypt. So they took the spoils of Egypt with them. And with this, with some of these anyway, or probably with most of them, is what they built the tabernacle in the wilderness. So now we have David collecting all this stuff, that he's eventually going to end up being a help when his son Solomon builds the temple. So it does seem to be a thing that God does. He'll take the spoils of the enemies of his people and use that to create something different. So it's a case of God, of course, not only bringing good out of evil, but taking that which belonged to the enemies and transforming to that into something which is actually a great benefit to his people, having a dwelling place where they can appear before him. The last section, verses 13

through 18, picks up with what he does next. It says David made a name for himself when he returned from striking down 18,000, that's a lot, 18,000 Edomites in the Valley of Salt. Now it's easy to And, you know, I read those like, okay, one more, uh, you know, one more ite, uh, you've got all these ites that are living in the land of Israel, but keep in mind, there's something unique about the Edomites. The Edomites are the descendants of Esau. And of course, Esau is the twin brother of Jacob. So when David takes on the Edomites, he's not just taking on just kind of this random

nation, like, you know, the Moabites or the Ammonites, whoever else he's taken on some that's really the the brother of israel these people are family but as we saw before and as we'll see plenty of other times even though jacob and esau kind of mended mended fences and kind of restored relationship when jacob returned throughout history their descendants were warring back and forth you see this all the way into the the time leading up to uh to the first century where there's this antagonism between the descendants of israel and the descendants of of esau anyway he strikes down a whole bunch of them in the valley of salt not exactly sure where that was but presumably it was south of the dead sea which is exactly where edom was located

then he puts garrisons in edom and they became his servants so more or less he's subjected the edomites like some of the other people around them and they're going to have they're going to have to pay David, pay Israel a tribute every year, which is what nations did back then. You would conquer a surrounding nation and subjugate them so that they would be forced to pay an annual tribute to you as just kind of part of their submission to you. And then verse 15 kind of wraps everything up. It says David reigned over all Israel. He administered, well, the ESV has he administered justice and equity i don't really like that word equity only because i think it has way too many modern connotations to it yeah those those people that are playing out paying all that

tribute they felt like everything was equitable right yeah yeah it just doesn't doesn't quite seem right the the hebrew uh does not have equity uh but it has that he administered mishpat which justice, and t'sadakah, which is the word for righteousness. So he administered justice and righteousness, and I think would be a better translation. I mean, I guess this is explicitly just talking about Israel, but he's definitely not administering equity to all. And equity has this sort of all-inclusive connotation with it, you know? I'm sure back in the day, slave masters like, I feel like everything's pretty equitable right here. It seems like justice and equity has been served and obviously we would say obviously we would say like i don't think so i don't think

so no i mean that that is my problem with that particular word there's nothing wrong with the word itself but in this particular context uh not just context in the bible but the historical context there was not equity no like anywhere so you can't take modern notions of equity and everybody being equal and read those back into this particular narrative it's it's just not there That society would not exist for a long, long time. Yeah, I mean, even within Israel, equity was not how that was built. I mean, it's not as though there were no obvious hierarchies going on. I mean, you had, even within Israel, all kinds of rankings.

Yeah, the whole society was hierarchical. That's simply the way. When you have a monarchy, by definition, everything is arranged hierarchically. So there is, there is no equity. There is righteousness, but that's not the same as, as equity. And then last three verses, we have a list of names. So these are the guys who were basically the council, the, uh, the highest servants who helped David out in a variety of different ways. Uh, Joab, we've already met. He's a son of Zeruiah. This is David's nephew. He's the general more or less. He's over, he's over the army. And then a guy named Jehoshaphat

is the mazkir in the Hebrew, which is formed from the verb zakar, to remember. We've talked about that plenty of times. So this guy is the rememberer. The recorder is the way it's ordinarily translated. We're not exactly sure everything he did, but presumably he kept records of some sort, whether that was orally or probably writing some things down,

but he was the mazkir, he was the rememberer. and then another guy named uh zadok son of a haitu and ahimelech the son of abiathar so zadok and ahimelech they're the they're the priests and then we have not the only priest of course but like the the chief priest i suppose to use new testament language for them then we have a guy named saraya who is the so fair in hebrew which is the word for scribe uh esv has it translated as secretary as does the new american standard but this is the same position or a similar position that we hear talked about later in in the scriptures however by the time you get to the new testament we hear about the scribes and the pharisees that's a different kind of scribe so

they're both similar in that what they do is connected with the so far with the the scroll more or less uh and to so they're connected with that which is you know written down or that which is read so he's the secretary he's the scribe and then we have a couple of guys mentioned here a couple different groups rather so benaiah the individual was over the charithites and the pelethites we don't know as much about them as i wish that we did uh they do come up multiple times in the rest of David's narrative, and then they pretty much disappear after that. There's a couple of mentions of them in the prophets, but most people, most scholars I've looked at, think that the Karathites came from the island of Crete, so the Cretans, and nobody really knows who the

Pelathites are, but they do seem to be in some way, both these groups, some way connected with the Philistines, maybe a subgroup of Philistines, but here's the important thing. They're not Israelites. So David gathers this group of kind of inside special warriors, the Karathites and the Pelathites, and they are around him all the time. So they're going to protect him when he has to flee during the coup of Absalom. They're going to go after Sheba later on when he rebels against David. They're going to be instrumental in making sure that David's choice for his successor solomon is anointed and receives the the throne and then they pretty much disappear but we do see david what i think is is interesting is that we do see david bringing around himself

foreigners and of course we're gonna we're gonna hear more about foreigners like uriah the hittite we're gonna hear about him later on so david is surrounding himself not just with israelites but with with gentiles which i think is uh is interesting in a couple different levels on the one hand, David is probably thinking, you know what, I want to get guys around me who don't really have any connections to the history of my people. So maybe they won't be as easily swayed by public opinion or by maybe longstanding family feuds or whatever it might be. They're not going to have any connection to Israel. So they have sort of an objective quality to them. At the same time, so that's kind of the political side of things. At the same time, I do think it's fascinating

that here we have the king wanting to bring gentiles into the kingdom so this wasn't just an israelite kingdom this was an israelite kingdom that wanted as much as they could to actually bring gentiles into into the fold we might say which is you know in some ways a a preview of what the son of david himself is going to do i mean he's he's mainly in the land of Israel, but he has a lot of interactions with non-Israelites, with Gentiles. If I remember correctly, I looked at this probably a couple years ago, if you look in the Gospels, it's pretty fascinating that every time that Jesus is amazed, the Greek verb for amazed, every time that Jesus is amazed in the Gospels, it's the faith of a Gentile. Not the faith of a fellow Israelite,

but the faith of a Gentile. Well, yeah, every time Jesus tells his own disciples, like, man, I really wish you guys had some faith that was comparable to this person, it's always some Gentile, which is a pretty big burn. You might skip past that, but that's not just like, ooh, like stinger. That's like a huge insult.

Yeah, the centurion or, of course, the Syrophoenician woman. I mean, there's a lot of examples in the New Testament of that happening. The centurion, he says, i i haven't seen such faith in all of israel like i just just like insults the entire nation so he starts off that way with his first sermon in nazareth too when he gives the example you know there were a lot of widows in israel but who did god send his prophet to widow outside yeah that was some that was some uh exegesis that no one had that it hadn't occurred to anyone at that point i think before jesus said it was like wait a minute i don't like that exegesis at all

Yeah, take that reading out of the lectionary from here on out. We don't want to hear about that. Well, David is obviously surrounding himself with Gentiles, and they became part of the kingdom of Israel. And then it wraps up with a very odd statement. I don't quite know what to make of this. So you got, let me read, I'll read the New American Standard, and then I'll read the ESV, and we'll talk about the Hebrew.

so new american standard has and david's sons were chief ministers now the esv has and david's sons were priests so you might say to yourself hmm well what does the hebrew say well hebrew says that david's sons were kohanim which is from kohane which is the word for priest i think the reason new american standard translates as chief ministers is because they're bothered and understandably so bothered by the fact that david would make his sons into priest now why is that a problem well because they weren't supposed to be according to mosaic law if you're a priest you have to be from the tribe of levi and specifically from the family of aaron and nobody else was allowed to be to be a priest uh that's that's patently clear when you go to

the Torah. But here, David makes his sons into kohanim, into priest. Why he did and how he tried to justify that, we're not told. But that is what happened. And I don't really have anything else to say about that. It's like one of those weird things that just kind of thrown out there like, okay, I don't know exactly what you're thinking, David, because your sons are not supposed to be priest, but maybe he reasoned that, well, I'm the king and I can do what I want, or I want my sons kind of in the midst of what's going on in the priesthood so they can be my eyes and ears there. I really, really don't know, but that is certainly an anomaly in the priesthood. Well, what I find as you read the Bible more and more, and I don't mean as I gradually read

through it. I mean, like the more times I read it. One thing that you start to see is whether you're talking about the nation of Israel, whether you're talking about the way that the kings set up things, or if you get to the New Testament and you're talking about the scribes and Pharisees, or you get to the church itself, what you realize is that this idea that in the scriptures there is a way that they are doing things and they never deviate from that way. And if we could just get back to the way they used to do it back when everything was in good order. Repristination.

You are incorrect. There are all kinds of breaking of norms. There's like the normal way things are done in the scriptures, but you realize from the jump, people are compromising on things constantly. A great example of that. I think I mentioned in the last episode

that I taught middle school, Sunday school two weeks ago. They asked me to teach it again. the regular teachers were out of town so we covered uh solomon and solomon's story is solomon you know it's his dream vision when god you know offers to give him whatever he asked for and and solomon asked for an understanding heart but anyway that the way that chapter starts out is that solomon was sacrificing on the high places like all the israelites were these high places are clearly forbidden in the book of Deuteronomy.

You're only supposed to sacrifice at the altar of the tabernacle. Like, period. There are no exceptions to that. Period. And yet, what do we see all over, all over the place before the temple's built? People sacrificing. You know, Saul's offering sacrifices.

Sam's offering sacrifices here and there. We see all kinds of what appear to us to be pretty clear norms being busted to pieces. People who aren't supposed to be offering sacrifices is offering sacrifices in places that you're not supposed to offer them i guess there's all kinds of uh norms being busted up here i mean yeah this is the sort of argument there was an argument

recently about who can be ordained and who cannot be ordained no i'm not gonna like make any arguments about this uh 40 minutes in the old testament uh but one of the arguments that was coming forward is well only levites were priests in the old testament this is not a good argument because, yeah, only Levites were priests except for those times that they weren't. Right, yeah. Except for those times when other people were. So that doesn't work.

Yeah, well, it's a good reminder, too, that it doesn't matter where you're at, like you said earlier. It doesn't matter where you're at, Old Testament or New Testament. There never was a time when you can simply take what was described as happening

and assume that that is correct and the way that things should always be. So just, in other words, you're reading through Samuel or you're reading through the book of Acts, for instance, and you read about something a leader did, Old or New Testament, or something that the church did,

Old or New Testament, you cannot automatically assume that because they did it and there's no explicit condemnation of it, that it was the right thing. I think that's another thing that we sometimes just kind of misunderstand or don't think deeply about in the scriptures.

Just because it's recorded that a person did something, and they might have been a king, they might have been a prophet, they might have been an apostle, just because they did that and there's no explicit word from God that says it was a bad thing doesn't mean it was a good thing. It's just recording what they did. So you can't take that as an example. Yeah, one of the most obvious things about this is in Acts

when they decide that they need to have another apostle. Yeah, we need 12. Got it? I mean, 12 tribes of Israel. Jesus said, you know, we had 12 initially, and then Judas bailed out, and we got to have 12. Jesus says to them, and I know this is like a huge, whatever, it's our show. Jesus says to them, you need to go and not do anything until the Holy Spirit comes. So just don't do anything.

Except choose a new apostle. The disciples are like, I think we should sit around and not do anything except probably choose a new apostle. Now, that seems like something you would want the Holy Spirit around for, I'm just saying. And what do they do? They choose some guy who's probably a great guy. I mean, I'm sure he's great. They draw straws like some weird pagans, and they choose a guy. And you never hear about that guy again.

and you know why because that's not the guy the guy that god is gonna choose to replace judas is out there killing christians currently and they would never pick him he's not on the list like god's like my guy's not on the list i'm working on it i got i got a plan here i need you to go do nothing and that's what they go do now the way that you'll read this a lot of times they'll say you know is that well no this was obviously this guy obviously was the 12th apostle and then you You know, Paul was like an additional apostle to the Gentiles. And the reason you want to read it that way is because you don't want to think that the apostles went and did something stupid and messed up. But they did like from the jump, the church put someone in a position that they shouldn't have been in, like the first thing the church did, because that's what we do.

Yeah. And that example could be multiplied over and over. So it's a good thing to keep in mind when you're reading Acts or anything else in the scriptures. Just because somebody did something and there's no word from God that says it was a bad thing or a wrong thing or not the best thing does not mean that it was the best thing or a good thing. Sometimes the Bible simply reports what happened. Yep. Okay. So that was a fun aside. That was big.

That rabbit trail was long. a lot of people give uh gives people something to think about okay so let's uh we have a 13 verse chapter coming up next and it's about a guy we've actually been introduced to i think back in chapter 21 um of of first samuel uh so been it's been quite a while but anyway back in first sam we were introduced to a guy actually not a guy just a kid a five-year-old by the name of mephibosheth It's a mouthful. And we're going to be reintroduced to him now because David is wondering if there's anybody left from the house of Saul, which is how the chapter starts out. So David says to somebody, he just not told who he addresses, but presumably kind of his inner court. Is there anybody left of the house of Saul?

now this is the interesting part not that I can kill not that I can make sure I get rid of in case they decide to try and claim the throne but that I may show kindness to for the sake of Jonathan

and the word translated there is kindness is your favorite word Dan chesed so I'm wanting to show kindness to somebody not just in general but for the sake of Jonathan Now, if you've been listening for a while, you know that David and Jonathan were extremely

close friends, closer than brothers, and they had sworn kind of a pact or a covenant with each other that they would always remain faithful to each other. But the same day that Saul died, Jonathan also died in that famous battle at the end of 1 Samuel. And David is wondering, hey, is there anybody left from the house of Saul that I can show this loving kindness this loyalty this this love to for the sake of jonathan and verse two we're told that there was a a servant of saul whose name was uh i don't know how we usually say this in english uh ziba ziba help me out here yeah sure either one i i that i would yeah i probably

would have said ziba yeah that's it ziba okay we'll say ziba uh so it was a servant of the house Saul, whose name was Ziba, and they called him to David. Now, this guy, he is a fascinating character. We're going to encounter him again two more times in the book of 2 Samuel, and I still don't know what to make of this guy. I don't know if he is an opportunist. I don't know if he's actually uh a loyal servant of uh of david but anyway he will he will come up again so remember this guy's name so ziba uh goes to the king and the king says to him hey is there is there is there not still somebody of the house of saul left that i can show the kindness of god to him yeah by the way that what this is telling you is there are not a lot of people from the house of

Saul left. I mean, they're like going around. He's like, is there anyone? I don't know. Let me go ask this other guy. I don't know. Maybe there's somebody. I sure don't know anybody. Man, this family got wiped out, man. Yeah, yeah. Big time. Big time. It's interesting, too. Notice the language that's used here. David says that I may show kindness to you for Jonathan's sake. And then when he repeats himself, he says that I may show the kindness of God to him. That little detail, I think, is interesting because David's wanting to show chesed, but the specific kind of chesed he wants to show is the chesed of God. Yeah, this is important because it means that whatever David is about to do, you can interpret as what David believes the kindness of God is like. Precisely. Yeah, yeah.

So this would be like, I want to show love to somebody, but I want this to be specifically divine love. I want to love this person in the way that God loves. So we can see David here being the instrument of Yahweh to show this particular kind of covenant loyalty, loving kindness, however you want to translate chesed. And we find out that there is. So Ziba says to the king, well, yes, matter of fact, there is still a son of jonathan and he is crippled in his feet and the king said to him

where's he at and tibba said to the king he's in the house of makir the son of amiel at lo devar i want to come back to that in a second let me kind of finish out this section so king david sent and brought him from the house of makir the son of amiel at lo devar and mephibosheth the son of jonathan the son of saul came to david and fell on his face and paid homage no i guarantee you but he did i guarantee you mishabath is scared to death right oh yeah he probably thinks this is it this is why this like kindness of god thing it works so perfectly in this story because i he's like this is not uh a good thing because i don't care what this guy told you when you go around hey is there anyone left in the house of saul he's like he might be like

he's using this i want to show i want to show him a little kindness like he's just trying to make sure that there's no one left uh yeah kindness in scare quotes yes yes show him some quote kindness he'll show you i'll show you some kindness yeah yeah like the reward that david gave to the other the other people earlier in the story oh i've got a reward for you yeah and they end up dead. Yes. So, I mean, this is, you have to have that in your head as this story unfolds, because there's no doubt in my mind that Meshibbeth does not see this coming. No, no. And to kind of set it up even more. So, if you remember that story, when he was five years old, the nurse taking care of him had to flee after, uh, after the defeat of Saul and his men. And she, uh, she was carrying

Mephibosheth and she dropped him. I had, you know, it was just like, if you, if for some reason you're, you're in a scary situation, whatever it might be, and you, you've got a kindergartner at home, well, you're not going to say, you know, run along with me, John, are you going to pick that kid up? Right. You're going to grab them. So she grabs the boy, but somewhere along the way, she trips, stumbles, whatever happened, she dropped him. And the injury was so great to both his feet that he was unable to walk. So he's handicapped the rest of his life. So keep that in mind about him. So here he is prostrated before the king. Both his feet are damaged to where he can't walk. And not only that, but there's sort of a, even a further hint in the language of where

he's from so he's from a place called lo devar which in the hebrew is written in different ways in different places but in one of the places where it's written as lo devar it actually means basically nothing so lo means not or no and devar means thing or matter so literally we could say this guy is from no place he's from nowhere right so not only is his basically his whole family destroyed uh the house of saul he's handicapped and he's from a place that's like a a nothing place so you in other words you can't get a person who it looks like they've lost more than this poor guy's hat has and now he's presented before the king who is who has replaced you know his grandfather saul and so he thinks well as if things weren't bad enough for me already now i'm

about to lose even my own life. And David says to him, verse 7, this is great, do not fear, which is a great way to begin. That sounds like Jesus. That's Jesus' opening line like every time. Nothing that Jesus says more in the Gospels than that. He's always telling people, don't be afraid. Yeah, nothing to be afraid of in Jesus. Don't fear. For, he says, I will show you chesed for the sake of your father, Jonathan. And not only that, or maybe the way this chesed will be shown is I will restore to you all the land of Saul, your father, really your grandfather, and you shall eat at my table always.

That's nice. Wow. Talk about a sweet and unexpected. This is that unexpected love that just slams into you from nowhere and just knocks you flat, and when you get up, you're laughing because it's such a crazy and unexpected gift. So don't be afraid because I'm about to show you kindness for the sake of your father. And the way this kindness is going to look is I'm going to make sure

you get all the land of your grandfather back. And not only that, but you're going to have a seat at my table. Yeah, which is a big deal. You're going to eat at the table of the king. Oh, yeah. it's it's i mean just imagine if you're uh whatever country you're living in you know people uh listen to this podcast all over the place so you're you're in america or you're in germany or you're in australia or wherever it might be and you're and you're basically told hey anytime that

you want to you can just pull up a seat there at the table of the president of the prime minister or whoever it might be there's like a chair with your name on it all the time that's what uh that's what Mephibosheth receives from, uh, from King David. And I was going over this this morning. I was thinking, man, that's, that's exactly what every Christian can say. Yeah. I mean, I've, I eat at the table of the King all the time. I've got a, I've got a chair at, uh, the table of the son of David every Sunday. Our buddy, Bob Hiller had this great tweet, uh, the other day where he says, when Jesus calls you his friend, it doesn't mean he's the guy who shows up every weekend to have a meal and talk straight to you wait no that's almost exactly what it means

that's great yeah so i mean what do you do on sundays well i uh i go to the table of a king and pull up a chair and have a meal that's what i do every sunday yeah jesus invites me to his table uh king king jesus the son of david and he says hey there you go i've uh i have prepared a place for you at my table that you can uh that you can have every sunday to dine on the feast of heaven that's a pretty amazing gift that's what mephibosheth receives from from david yeah then and this is a this is an everlasting invitation right like you have a place at my table always always yeah never never ending and uh the guy is so is so blown away by this he He's like, more or less, who am I, right?

What is your servant that you should show regard for a dead dog such as I? I think this is the third time we've had that expression about a dead dog used. David used it a couple of times, and now we have it here from Mephibosheth. It must have been a popular expression back in the day. It seems like it's usually a self-deprecating statement, too. It's used most commonly about yourself. You refer to yourself as this. yeah i don't know what a modern equivalent that would be like if you're trying to be

self-deprecating what would you say you certainly wouldn't call yourself a dead animal no i don't know what it would be but uh uh dead dog is uh is what they used to that was the that was the word on the street back then for self-deprecation uh what is what does david do he calls uh ziba again that servant of saul and informs him of his decision he says hey everything that belonged to Saul and to his house, I've given to this guy. I've given to your master's grandson. So what I want you to do is for you and your sons, and we find out later that Ziba has a bunch of sons. I'm thinking from what I've read, Ziba is probably pretty high up, was pretty high up in Saul's household. He was a servant of Saul, but he was in charge of a lot of Saul's

land and possessions and people, so like a master-servant kind of situation, head-servant. Anyway, he says to him, you and your sons and your servants shall work the land for this guy, bring the produce, so that there's always plenty to eat. And Mephibosheth, the grandson of Saul, is going to eat at my table. Oh yeah, here we have it, verse 10. It's right there. He had 15 sons and 20 servants. So if you got 15 sons, I'm not saying for sure, but a probably pretty good chance that you have more than one wife yep and if you have more than one life that means that you have money because that was it was a sign of of wealth back then because if you have that many children to take care of you uh probably gonna have the possessions to do it so he's got 15 sons

that meant he probably had a lot of daughters too so who knows we're looking at maybe 20 25 children yeah i mean it's interesting that he said all right you're gonna go be this guy's servants now uh you and all your servants are gonna go over there and you're gonna till the ground you're gonna make sure that you know he has produce and have bread to eat uh not that he's gonna need it because uh he's going to always eat at my table all right yeah this guy's just should he ever be there yeah just want to make sure that pantry is stocked pantry is stocked yeah so uh ziba says to the king according to all that my lord the king commands his servant so will your servant do so i'm gonna cross all those teeth and dot all those eyes

and we're told in verse 11 that Mephibosheth ate at David's table like like listen to this like one of the king's sons so it seems as if David has basically unofficially adopted him and he's probably uh I did some some work in the chronology at this point because he was five years old when he received his injury uh and all the other stuff has happened since then with you know David having to wait to reign over israel and whatnot mephibosheth is probably in his 20s maybe early 20s maybe mid-20s so he's at that stage and uh so he's adopted now unofficially adopted as david's own and he is married yeah he has to say what would i think maybe i'm wrong here but it seems what's implied is that you know he's out there with nothing uh david fixes that and next thing

he's got a son of his own. And I'm reading this as the son comes after David does this stuff, right? So David has created an environment for him to thrive. Maybe he was married before that, maybe not. I mean, he is lame, and that was not a good thing at this time. But if you're being taken care of by the king, well, maybe someone's interested in that. And so I kind of read this as, I mean, his life gets turned completely around. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he hit the jackpot on this. And the great thing about it is it's completely unexpected.

So he has a young son either after or before, whose name is Micah. And then all who lived in Ziba's house became Mephibosheth's servants. And then Mephibosheth basically moves. he goes to Jerusalem and ate at the king's table. Yeah, I love this, that it says, so Meshupatheth lived in Jerusalem. He had to move to Jerusalem because he ate always at the king's table.

Yeah, like, if it's breakfast, dinner, lunch, and you're looking for Mephibosheth, you know where to find him. Oh, yeah, well, just check out David's table. That's where he is. That's where he is. He's going to be. Yeah, there's three times that we have this always. I mean, so I think it's safe to say that invitation accepted, and this is where he's eating.

Yeah, yeah. I love this chapter because it really is—you can't help but like David. I don't always like David, but you can't help but like David in this chapter because he is truly reaching out in love, in chesed to someone. and basically he's the conduit for God to love this guy who was kind of without hope and living nowhere. And then David brings him to, it's like he elevates him from the lowest to the highest position that he could possibly have,

which is just a great picture of grace and mercy at work there. That's what David means for it to be. Again, he wants to show him the kindness of God. And so David does something that he thinks God would do. this is great news for us, because that is exactly the sort of stuff that God does. Yeah, I mean, this is the magnificat where Mary sings about, you know, pulling the lofty down, lifting up the lowly. This is that great reversal that is accomplished by the work of the Son of David. Yeah, and that's it, man. We got through that chapter, and we are out of time. Guys,

make sure you sign up for the conference out there in Las Vegas. We'd love to hang out with you all the information on the site or you can click the link in the show notes uh chad i will see you next week all right see you then