Tag Info

See: 1 Chronicles 21:25: And there was war again with the Philistines; and Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi, the brother of Goliath the Gittite, whose spear staff was like a weaver's beam. Goliath in Samuel 21 is actually Goliath's brother. It could be that the original audience of the Bible understood that the name Goliath could refer to both ...

There have been several proposed reconciliations of the Matthew and Luke genealogies. Among the popular ones are: Matthew's genealogy traces legal heirs; Luke's traces biological ancestors. Matthew's genealogy traces the ancestry of Joseph; Luke's traces the ancestry of Mary. This view takes the phrase "as was supposed of Joseph" in 3:23 as a parenthetical ...

Idols were commonplace in David's time, perhaps his wife Michal went out and purchased one to help cover up his escape. Another possibility is that other residents in his household worshiped the idols and David never expressly forbade idols from his household, thus Michal may have borrowed or moved an idol from elsewhere in the house.

While it is true that David was a man after God's own heart, he was also a man who had no scruples about killing. Take, most famously, as an example, Uriah. Uriah was killed for the grievous offense of having a hot wife! In the case of Joab, it was a political revenge killing, pure and simple. David says in 1 Kings 2: 5 “Now you yourself know what ...

David, in convincing Saul why he should be allowed to be Israel's representative on the battlefield says, "Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God." And to Goliath he says, You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a ...

And what's wrong with taking a census anyway? I don't believe we are told anywhere that taking a census is wrong, but in Exodus 30, God makes certain commands concerning them: 12 “When you take the census of the people of Israel, then each shall give a ransom for his life to the Lord when you number them, that there be no plague among them when ...

David attacks the Geshurites, the Gezerites and the Amelikites, all traditional enemies of Judah and Israel and potential allies of Achish to the southwest. He left no one alive so that no prisoners would tell Achish who David was really attacking, that's the trick. When asked, David says that he attacked to the south (actually southwest) of Judah, south of ...

Here is a list of possible answers: The author has to integrate a lot of oral tradition from opposing sides in what was in fact a civil war; northern anti-monarchy tribal federalists backed by some heavy hitting prophets, pro-monarchy Kish clan proponents, and pro-monarchy Ishai clan proponents. No one comes out of I Samuel smelling like roses. The author ...

Not a Hyperbolic Expression The Text of Psalm 51:4: לְךָ לְבַדְּךָ ׀ חָטָאתִי וְהָרַע בְּעֵינֶיךָ עָשִׂיתִי לְמַעַן תִּצְדַּק בְּדָבְרֶךָ תִּזְכֶּה בְשָׁפְטֶֽךָ׃ Explanation 1) "Against you alone" (לְךָ לְבַדְּךָ): This is a prayer of David for repentance (a penitential psalm), and while he sinned against many others in the affair with Bathsheba, ...

hekal(הֵיכָל) means 'palace' or 'temple'. It is used to refer to the Solomon's Temple but also (for example) the house at Shiloh in David's time, here in 1 Samuel 1:9 After they had eaten and drunk in Shiloh, Hannah rose. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the Lord. ESV Among other usages, it can also refer ...

The portrayal of David in the books of Samuel and Kings is ambivalent. In the current idiom we might say "conflicted". There is much positive material, but also a vast amount of negative material. The ambivalence is consistent throughout the narrative, almost from David's first appearance. This last picture we get of David epitomizes the ambivalence, and it ...

Jack Douglas already does a good job of handling the possibility of concurrent causes, so I won't repeat his ideas on the first question. However, I think more can be said in answer to your second question. What's wrong with taking a census? We see in 1 Chronicles 21:3 that what's wrong is not a matter of procedure. The act of taking a census is one that ...

According to the Talmud, certain things associated with a king (his horse, e.g.) are forbidden ever to be used by a commoner. Specifically, the widow of a king is forbidden to marry anyone but another king. And if the next king is his son, she can’t marry him either—the laws in Leviticus still apply. Avishag was not married to David, and so was not ...

It is important to remember that the "historical books" of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings are better called "the earlier prophets." They teach from the prophetic point of view, not simply chronological events. From Hard Sayings of the Bible. It is more important to group things by importance than it is to lay it out chronologically. 17:55–58 Why ...

David accepted the death of his child by Bathsheba as punishment for his sin with her and he let that overcome his grief. (The status of the child’s soul is a question for elsewhere.) There was no such consideration in the case of Absalom, and David was overcome by father’s grief. Joab berates him for this, saying that his grief threatens morale. ...

All Psalms are poetry, which demands a different set of rules than we normally use for hermeneutics. Most of the Psalms attributed to David are additionally prayers to God. (We see an example of how a psalm was used in prayer during that time period in 1st Samuel 2:1-11.) Psalms appeal to emotion as well as reason. So we need to use somewhat specialized ...

I think this question must be broken down in two: Why did Jonathan and David make up this plan? Why did the author of the book include this detail in the narrative? The first question has never really bothered me, thus this answer is not the result of extensive study, nor have I consulted any commentaries. I have always envisioned that they made the plan ...

I would identify at least two purposes: The author shows that in all of David's endeavors leading up to his becoming king, he attempted to avoid bloodshed, particularly with the house of Saul. His enemies were not his kinsmen; but his enemies were those who attacked his kinsmen (i.e. the Philistines and the Amalekites). David uses trickery to avoid ...

God is a loving God, but He is also just. In the case of Sha'ul, it seems that God permitted a demon ("evil spirit") to possess Sha'ul in punishment of his transgressions. Satan does not possess any authority or power besides that which is expressly permitted by God (cp. Job 1:12). In fact, neither do humans. When Pilate asked Jesus, "Don't you know that I ...

Shlomo ("Solomon"), the son of David, continued to go whoring after gods other than YHVH (1 Kings 11:1-10). This was exacerbated by his numerous foreign wives of whom God warned Shlomo that they would cause him to go astray and commit idolatry. Consequently, YHVH told Shlomo that he would rend the kingdom from him, except that He would leave one tribe (the ...

At the outset 1 Kings, King David is near death and he hasn't explicitly chosen a successor. David's first three children, Amnon, Absalom, and the unnamed child from II Samuel 12 are dead, so Adonijah is next in line for the throne. Adonijah thinks he will be king and he has an entourage, but he doesn't have the support of the whole nation (1 Kings 1:5-10). ...

No, David is not The Godfather - at least not in the Don Corleone sense of a family head establishing his dynasty through corruption and murder. A dynasty is established - the chapter indeed concludes: "The kingdom was now firmly established in Solomon's hands." But the previous commands of David are introduced to explain that Solomon's rise to power is not ...

This whole section of Samuel is fraught with intrigue. It starts with 1st Samuel 27 where David takes his family, 600 men, and their families over to join Achish. But David's relationship with Achish is built on a lie: he did not switch loyalty away from his fellow Israelites. As you point out, David keeps his options open when Achish prepared to join ...

First, remember that David was king, and as king he answered to no one but G-d. He could have ordered Uriah killed on whatever pretext and then taken Bat-Sheva. He had that authority. Instead, what he did was rely on the fact that Jewish soldiers going into battle are required to give their wives conditional retroactive divorce papers which in effect say: ...

One possible way would be to assume a difference in the semantics of the original word(s). As far as I see: This is always true and has to be taken into consideration. (He did not write for us and our time and our understanding. But since this text is so well supported by even the earliest translation up to the latest, it could prove worthwhile to remain ...

...I still don't feel that Joab should have been punished... Feelings. Bah. Remember, this was David passing sentence, not God. Nothing says that David has to feel about things the same way you do, especially considering he lived in a very different and more brutal age. For that matter, even if it was God, at no time should we ever be so arrogant to ...

Great question. By indicating that he had killed the lion and bear, David was telling Saul that he had experienced the power of God as delineated in the Torah (Please compare Lev 26:21-22, which is a judgment of God, with Ex 23:28-30 and its parallel in Deut 7:22-23) -- that is, the Lord would defeat the uncircumcised Gentiles, who are equated with animals. ...

The entire verse 11 is in the imperfect mood. It seems then that we must decide if that means that: 1a) It is used to describe a single (as opposed to a repeated) action in the past; it differs from the perfect in being more vivid and pictorial. The perfect expresses the "fact", the imperfect adds colour and movement by suggesting the "process" ...