2 Samuel 2:1–7

Samuel 2:1–7

1IN THE COURSE of time, David inquired of the LORD. “Shall I go up to one of the towns of Judah?” he asked.

The LORD said, “Go up.”

David asked, “Where shall I go?”

“To Hebron,” the LORD answered.

2So David went up there with his two wives, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel. 3David also took the men who were with him, each with his family, and they settled in Hebron and its towns. 4Then the men of Judah came to Hebron and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah.

When David was told that it was the men of Jabesh Gilead who had buried Saul, 5he sent messengers to the men of Jabesh Gilead to say to them, “The LORD bless you for showing this kindness to Saul your master by burying him. 6May the LORD now show you kindness and faithfulness, and I too will show you the same favor because you have done this. 7Now then, be strong and brave, for Saul your master is dead, and the house of Judah has anointed me king over them.”

Original Meaning

David Becomes King at Hebron (2:1–4a)

THE OPENING PHRASE (“In the course of time,” 2:1) is a Hebrew idiom used as a transition marker, especially in 2 Samuel (see 8:1; 10:1; 13:1; 15:1; 21:18).1 Here this phrase introduces the public anointing of David by the people of Judah. Earlier, Samuel had anointed David (1 Sam. 16:13). Now that David’s predecessor Saul proved himself unworthy and is dead and properly buried, it is time for this private and prophetic anointing of David to be repeated in public. Now is the time for David to move into action and claim the promises of God.

But as so often happens, it is difficult to know when one should take action and when one should wait upon God’s guidance. Fortunately for David, he does not have to rely on his own instincts and intuition, as valuable as they are. The expression “David inquired of the LORD” (2:1) tells it all. Occasionally in the history of David’s rise, we have seen him “inquire” of Yahweh as a means of discerning God’s will and determining what his next course of action should be. David learned the importance of inquiring of Yahweh from the good priests of Nob (1 Sam. 22:10, 13, 15). When the priest Abiathar managed to escape the slaughter that took place at that unfortunate city, he found refuge with David. Thereby David gained the benefits of obtaining the Urim and Thummim, the divinely sanctioned and approved means of seeking God’s guidance.2 On numerous occasions, David called for the priestly ephod containing the Urim and Thummim in order to seek God’s will (1 Sam. 22:10; 23:2, 4; 30:7–8; 2 Sam. 5:23; cf. 1 Sam. 22:13, 15). This dependence on Yahweh for guidance characterizes David and is partly what the text refers to when it describes him as the ideal king of Israel.

Moreover, the narrator has highlighted this phrase in several places in order to contrast David with Saul. Yahweh eventually stopped answering Saul’s inquiries, presumably because Saul summarily made up his mind before asking (1 Sam. 14:36–37). Near the end of his life, the silence of Yahweh was an ominous indication of the depth of Saul’s despair (28:6). By contrast, David is the faithful leader who learns from the priest how to listen to God.

The contrast in the technical terminology for seeking God’s will continues to manifest itself in David and Saul’s son Ish-Bosheth. David inquires before taking a step, but Ish-Bosheth becomes king as a result of political machinations in the north (2:8–11). David is portrayed as relying only on the power and timing of Yahweh, while Ish-Bosheth will be introduced as a puppet in the hands of human power structures. David patiently inquires of the Lord before he takes any action. This is no “power play” on David’s part. Instead, this is “faith play,” and the significance of the contrast between David and Ish-Bosheth will dominate the next few chapters.

David’s move to Judah is permanent; he has no intentions of returning to Philistia, as is evident by the reference to his entire company of people: the men with him, their families, and David’s own two wives (2:2–3). Ahinoam and Abigail were prominent women from the surrounding countryside. Their presence aids David in his transition from ally in a foreign land to recently returned candidate for the throne.3

With God’s guidance revealed clearly through the Urim and Thummim, surrounded by his retinue of family and personal troops, David is finally ready to be anointed king by the inhabitants of Judah. Gathering at Hebron, they use the traditional Israelite custom of anointing as a means of formalizing the royal status of David (2:4). Prophetic anointing indicates divine approval and is symbolized by the coming of the Spirit of Yahweh and the bestowal of supernatural empowerment (see comments on 1 Sam. 16:6–13). Here, however, anointing is by the people, which represents the public acceptance of David as king. Most likely it symbolizes a pledge of loyalty to David on the part of the inhabitants of Judah; for his part, David is granting them a royal promise.4

David’s Proposal to Jabesh Gilead (2:4b–7)

Bridging Contexts

DAVID’S MOTIVES. From the perspective of the modern historian, David’s actions immediately before and after his coronation at Hebron may hint at crude political manipulation.8 After all, he has shared the plunder from his raid against the Amalekites with these same inhabitants of Judah (1 Sam. 30:26–31), perhaps considering it a bribe or a down payment on his future royal claims. The wives mentioned in verse 2, Ahinoam and Abigail, are both from the area around Hebron and provide David with significant familial connections to the south, perhaps also preparing for his seizure of political power.9 His diplomatic overtures to the people of Jabesh Gilead in the north (2:4b–7) look like calculated attempts to undermine the authority of his counterpart Ish-Bosheth, who has laid claim to these same regions (2:9). David is certainly shrewd and deliberate in his decisions, but is it also possible to interpret him as cold and insidious in his quest for the throne? Perhaps his coronation at Hebron is the result of nothing more than rapacious ambition, and David is no more than a driven politician seizing power after the death of his unfortunate opponent.

However one might answer this question is mere speculation because we cannot delve into the motives of David beyond the indications of the text. Besides, this is the wrong question to ask. Whether David is savagely opportunistic or simply naïve may be a question for today’s historians, but this is not the point of our text. The narrator has been clear from the outset: This anointed one, unlike Saul, is driven only by the promises of Yahweh and takes action under Yahweh’s leadership. Thus, our narrative explains that David takes the throne of Judah at God’s invitation and promptly offers to rule the unified nation by extending an olive branch to Jabesh Gilead.

David is no doubt politically shrewd, and perhaps he is ambitious. But our task as Christian readers of the Bible is not to reconstruct David’s psychological motivations. Rather, we are looking for the central message of this text, from which we can build a bridge to today’s world. This paragraph is an important step in the extended narrative’s concern with this question: Who can serve suitably as king of Israel? Irrespective of the psychoanalytical realities of David’s character, David is primarily galvanized by his zeal for Yahweh and is completely dependent on Yahweh for guidance and strength. In short, David is suitable as Israel’s king in a way that Saul was not—and now Ish-Bosheth is not.

Inquiring for God’s will. However, it is precisely that suitability that gives us difficulty. It is David’s faithful and persistent dependence on the will of God that makes him suitable as Israel’s king. We want to be faithful too, but God’s will can seem all too elusive. Wherever we encounter the phrase “inquire of the LORD” (2:1) in the history of David’s rise, we as twenty-first-century readers must address the question: How does one inquire of God today?10

The need for divine guidance is an undeniable link between believers of Bible times and today. The Bible is clear that God communicated to Israel’s ancestors, but we are not often told the precise means through which he did so. The Lord simply “said” to Abraham that he must leave Ur of the Chaldeans and travel to an unknown land (Gen. 12:1). The ancestral narratives contain many such examples of hearing and receiving divine messages, though rarely are we told how the revelation is mediated. Jacob’s stairway dream is one exception, as is also his encounter with the mysterious night visitor at Peniel (Gen. 28:10–22; 32:22–32).11

With the arrival of the Mosaic covenant, we read of a variety of divine communications, including the burning bush, pillars of cloud and fire, and theophanic trumpet blasts. But with Moses, the divine communication was given a permanency because of the written word of God, which included the Ten Commandments and applications of the law (Ex. 24:4; Deut. 31:9, 24). This new form of divine communication quickly became primary over other expressions of God’s will. The Mosaic law made provisions for the Urim and Thummim for special communications in the future (Ex. 28:30; Lev. 8:8; Num. 27:21), but the written covenantal law was clearly on a different level as an expression of divine will. During subsequent periods of Old Testament history, the prophets arrived to interpret and explain the significance of the law, and Jewish believers of the Exile accepted the written Word as God’s divinely approved means of guidance and direction.

Christians generally believe that God is still a communicating God and that he desires to communicate with us in clear and discernible ways. But we no longer have David’s advantage of priestly ephod with its Urim and Thummim. We should recognize that we stand in a great historical line of believers that stretches back to biblical times. As God’s revelation progressed, the means of communicating his guidance and direction changed. Like faithful Jewish believers before us, we Christians are “people of the book.” Without denying the possibility of audible voices or dramatic writing in the sky, we must admit that God’s primary means of communicating today is through Scripture. Any spectacular revelation that contradicts Scripture is wrong. Through Scripture, we believe God still communicates and teaches us, just as he communicated and instructed in Old Testament days.

The portrait of David in this paragraph is not complete, however, with only the seeking and finding of Yahweh’s will. Perhaps the most impressive words of the text are those that open verse 2: “So David went up there….”12 Having heard God’s voice through the Urim and Thummim, David acts in accordance with that revelation. This is what makes him a suitable king for Israel as much as his persistence to inquire of Yahweh. This king, unlike Saul, will obey the direction of Yahweh. Certainly this raises questions for readers who know and anticipate the surprising and disappointing events of 2 Samuel. But those events are yet to be, and we must not get ahead of our narrator.

Looking back and looking ahead. When considering how to build a bridge from this text to our context, we should also note that our paragraph has a distinctively retrospective dimension. There are interesting intertextual reverberations between David as Israel’s king and Israel’s ancestors narrated in Genesis 12–50. When David became king of Judah and eventually of all Israel (see 5:1–3 below), he fulfilled the promises of God to Abraham and Sarah, the parents of the nation of Israel (“kings will come from you,” Gen. 17:6, 16).13 David is perhaps also the fulfillment of Jacob’s blessing to Judah (49:10): “The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his.”14

Similarly, the surprise ending to the story of Ruth and Boaz transforms the message of that book. Instead of an interesting little narrative about a young woman who was fortunate to find a new life in Bethlehem, the book becomes a profound statement about God’s direction in history (Ruth 4:13–22). God intervened in the lives of faithful Israelite commoners in order to prepare for the coming of Israel’s ideal king. Our little paragraph in 2 Samuel now brings the great-grandson of Ruth and Boaz to the throne of Judah. These intertextual echoes bind this narrative with much of what precedes and demonstrate God’s faithfulness to his promises through his guidance in establishing the united monarchy.

But if this text exhibits a retrospective dimension, it is also decidedly forward-looking. After all, Samuel had anointed David king of Israel (1 Sam. 16:1). This paragraph brings us only to David’s rule over Judah, but for the fulfillment of Yahweh’s promise we must await the outcome of a bloody civil war and his anointing by “all the tribes of Israel” (2 Sam. 5:1). So our text is part of a trajectory that goes through a subsequent coronation, which itself is part of a larger mosaic, contributing finally to intertestamental expectations of a Messiah. Just as David appears here as a patient servant who is completely reliant on God for direction and strength, so the trajectory of Scripture leads us eventually to David’s greater Son, the Messiah, who illustrates for us the ultimate reliance on his Father for direction and strength.

Contemporary Significance

DAVID SOUGHT, FOUND, and obeyed the will of God. In the process, God fulfilled his promises to him and made him king of Judah. The timeless truth of this text becomes clear for us when we realize that David serves as the paradigm for the ideal king of Israel and secondarily as a paradigm for any believer.

Obedience. Perhaps you have heard it said (or have said yourself): If only I could have the same kind of experience with God as Moses (or David, or X-biblical saint), then surely I would be as faithful as they were. In reality, we have the advantage over these biblical saints because of where we stand in relation to God’s redemptive acts in history and because we have in our possession the entire Bible. Benjamin Disraeli once remarked, “As a general rule the most successful [person] in life is the [one] who has the best information.”15 If this is true, you and I have the potential to be more faithful than these great biblical characters. Whereas David relied on the priestly ephod, with its Urim and Thummim, to “inquire of the LORD,” you and I have far superior resources. Instead of limited “yes” or “no” answers from God, we have the complete and full revelation of his overarching plan, which is clear and perspicuous in its essential details.

We also have a seemingly limitless number of recent translations of the Bible, stores full of wonderful tools for Bible study, and computer software programs to save us time in our quest for God’s truth. David sought the voice of God in the primitive use of Urim and Thummim; you and I have God’s inspired Word in so many forms we are forced to choose which to use. Whether all of these advantages have made today’s church any more effective in its witness is debatable. Perhaps it is even presumptuous to talk about seeking, finding, and obeying the will of God as David did. In reality, we have the potential to seek and find much easier than believers of any other generation before us. Obedience is the final frontier.

In a famous journal entry entitled “The Tame Geese,” Søren Kierkegaard imagined a land in which geese could talk. Not only could they talk, but it was also their habit to waddle off to church every Sunday, where one of the ganders preached. The sermons were essentially the same: The geese had been given a lofty destiny and a high goal by the Creator (and every time the Creator was mentioned, the geese all curtsied and the ganders bowed their heads). “By the aid of wings, the geese could fly away to distant regions, blessed climbs, where properly they were at home, for here they were only strangers.” And so it was Sunday after Sunday. But Kierkegaard noted the unfortunate truth that each Sunday after such eloquent sermons, “as soon as the assembly broke up each waddled home to his own affairs,” rather than attempted to fly. All the while, the geese “throve and were well-liked, became plump and delicate—and then were eaten … and that was the end of it.”16

In this text, David not only sought and found God’s will, but having found it, he obeyed (“So David went up,” 2:2). When applying this text, it would be easy (and convenient!) to dwell on the legitimate and all-too-difficult task of rightly discerning God’s will for our lives. True, it is often difficult to discern what we should do in specific situations. But we must go beyond this to the obedience of Israel’s ideal king. Though we may occasionally be in need of clarification and may not always feel we understand God’s direction in our lives, we should devote ourselves to living up to the light we have received while praying and waiting for further clarification.

I have heard it said that God is looking for the kind of person he can afford to bless. As a paradigm for all believers, David is the kind of person God can afford to bless! More specifically, this text relates to 1 Samuel in demonstrating the kind of ruler God is pleased to bless in contradistinction to Saul (the text’s retrospective dimension, see above). The text also contributes to Israel’s encompassing messianic consciousness by illustrating why David is the ideal king and why he will ultimately become the standard by which all future kings of Israel will be measured (forward-looking dimension). David understands that as king of Israel he will be merely a viceroy. He knows who really rules Israel, which is why he continues to “inquire” of Yahweh.

Original Meaning

David Becomes King at Hebron (2:1–4a)

David’s Proposal to Jabesh Gilead (2:4b–7)

Bridging Contexts

Contemporary Significance