Day 102 1 Kings 6-7

            Solomon made a temple over the course of the next four years.  It was built with cedar and bronze and fancy stones, but all of the actual stone work had to be done at the quarry so no iron tools were used to work the stone at the temple.  This sort of thing has been mentioned in passing a couple times now.  It kind of seems like God has a problem with iron tools.

            Solomon also builds a palace, but that takes 13 years.

Day 101 1 Kings 3-5

             God asks Solomon what he wants and Solomon asks for wisdom.  God is pleased with him for asking for something more selfless than long life or wealth or military conquest, so he gives him wisdom plus all those other things he didn’t ask for.  Solomon quickly becomes famous for his wisdom all through Israel and beyond.  People come from all over the world to hear him adjudicate disputes among his people.  One such dispute is that famous story of Solomon threatening to cut a baby in half when he hears two women fighting over it.  The baby’s true mother would rather see it given to the other woman than killed.

            Solomon also gets the ball rolling on building a proper temple for God.  He contracts with the king of Tyre because he says those people are the best at collecting lumber and he needs them to get this job done right.  The king of Tyre blushes and gives Solomon a good deal on the labor, trading his men for Israelite grain and oil.

            There’s a story of Benjamin Franklin turning a rival into a friend in the continental congress by borrowing a rare book from him.  He said that if he had just acted friendly and said nice things to the man, it would have come off as insincere and they would have gotten along even worse.  By getting the man to do him a favor though, it made the man basically justify to himself that Franklin must be someone worth doing a favor for, so he must be an okay guy.  I think Solomon’s probably wise enough to run that game on the king of Tyre.

            The workers from Israel and from Tyre collect lumber from the city of Byblos.  The Middle East isn’t really known for its lush forests these days, but there used to be some good places for harvesting wood.  Byblos was a big place for getting wood, so they had a lot of wood by-products around all the time like sawdust and stuff.  Eventually someone decided to see what he could do with wood pulp and invented paper.  There’s not a lot of paper left over from back then because it wasn’t nearly as tough as the flattened, woven reed mats called papyrus that the Egyptians used, so they didn’t hold up as well over the last couple thousand years.  These sheets also didn’t travel very well.  They would basically fall apart if you looked at them the wrong way.  The only advantage they had over papyrus was that they were much thinner and could more easily be collected into sheaves.  In Byblos, they started affixing these sheaves together and the resulting invention was named after the town.  In Latin, they called it a biblius, which we translate into English as something like book or library.  It is also where we get the word bible.

Day 100 1 Kings 1-2

            David is really old now and one of his sons, Adonijah start setting himself up as the new king.  Once he hears about what’s happening though, David quickly makes his other son Solomon king before Adonijah gets back to Jerusalem.  That goes pretty well, with Adonijah stepping down and immediately recognizing his younger brother’s rule.  All he asks is that Solomon not kill him and Solomon says that he will be just fine as long as he’s a helpful part of the kingdom and doesn’t try to do sneaky political stuff.

            David dies around this time, but he gives Solomon some peculiar advise.  David’s rule was marked by astounding forgiveness and grace.  Every time something aweful happened, as soon as they got it sorted out, David’s men would want to go kill everyone who had stood against them and David would say something like “No way, we’ve won.  This is a time for celebration.” And let everyone go about their business for the most part.  Apparently he’s been taking good notes though because now he tells Solomon to start off his kingship by killing a bunch of these guys that David spared before.  All those times he swore not to kill somebody, he just filed it away so he could have his successor kill them decades later, which is kind of like what a sociopath would do.  David’s really old and near death now though so maybe he’s just getting jaded.

            Amidst Solomon having all these guys killed, Adonijah shows up again trying to marry the concubine assigned to keep David warm at night.  That’s not a euphemism, she was just supposed to lay down with him and keep the bed warm because he was too frail to keep himself warm anymore.  They never had sex so it isn’t taboo for David’s son to marry her, just a little bit weird.

            Solomon sees this as a political move though, which it probably was to be fair, and has Adonijah killed.

            This seems like a rocky start to Solomon’s rule, but I guess everyone knows he means business now.

            This is the 100^th passage which means I’m almost a third of the way through the Bible.  I had no idea what a commitment writing this was going to be, but I’m glad to have some accountability at least.  I don’t think I ever would have made it through Numbers if I didn’t feel obligated to post something about it online.  I’m feeling very thankful for those four or five guys in India, Russia and Washington who are regularly reading my entries.  Thanks guys.

Day 99 2 Samuel 22-24

            David sings the praises of the Lord, calling Him his fortress and singing of how God protected him and destroyed his enemies.  The song is presented as the last words of David, but David goes on to do other things afterword, so maybe David just wanted to make sure to get his legacy written down before it was too late.

            The best of David’s fighting men were also mentioned honorably and some of their exploits told so they would not be forgotten either.

            David takes a census of all the fighting men in Israel and Judah (which are different enough to warrant separate mentioning now I guess) at God’s behest, but after it’s done, David goes to the Lord apologizing and begging mercy for what he’s done.  I have no idea what David is supposed to have done wrong in this passage, but it warrants a plague from God.  He goes pretty easy on them all told, he let David chose from among famine, military conquest, or sickness.  David chooses the disease, but then is guilt-stricken when people start dying for his own sin and he runs off to build an altar and pray to God.

            Another thing that I don’t understand in this passage is David’s burnt offering.  It’s been the case so far that only priests can make burnt offering, and maybe prophets once in a while.  Being king is pretty clearly a political position and does not give you any special rights with God.  When Saul tried to make a burnt offering because Samuel was running late that time, God and Samuel were both furious with him for it.  Maybe when it says David made a burnt offering it actually means that David just prayed and had his priests make a burnt offering.  It’s a pretty minor point today I suppose, since we don’t make these offerings anymore and anyone can petition God personally, but people have died over this before in the old testament.

Day 98 2 Samuel 19-21

            David mourns the loss of his son, but his army is disheartened by his sadness.  One of his generals chews him out for it, telling him it’s obvious to the men that David would rather all of them had died and they’d lost the battle.  He told David he loves those who hate him and hates those who love him, and that if he doesn’t go out and act thankful and happy in front of the men, he’s not going to have any men left by morning.

            Obviously there’s a whole lot of “Oh, I knew you were going to come back the whole time my lord.  I always said you were the true king of Israel, of course” on David’s trip back to Jerusalem.  Escorting him back through the land, the armies of Judea and the combined armies of the rest of Israel are practically fighting over who gets to carry David’s tent poles for him.  Even Mephibosheth shows up again, claiming that his servant had lied and that he wanted to come out and meet David to support him earlier but his wicked servant stopped him.  David, gentle soul that he is, accepts pretty much everyone back into the fold and stops his men from killing those suspected of disloyalty.  He didn’t restore all of Mephibosheth’s lands, which he had given to his servant before, but he splits them and lets each keep half.

            There was one guy that David had to kill.  A man named Sheba was stirring up trouble and trying to incite rebellion.  David said that this guy would be even more trouble than Absolom had been and ordered his men to chase him down.  He holed up in a city, but when David’s army laid siege to them they quickly killed Sheba and threw his head out to David’s men.

            There was a famine for three years, so David asked the Lord about it and He said that it was because of the way that Saul had tried to wipe out the Gibeonites, who were descended from the Ammorites, whom the Israelites had sworn to spare back when they had first arrived.  David went to make amends with them, and they were cool about it.  They said they didn’t want riches or land or war or anything, they said they would call it even if they were given seven males from Saul’s line to kill.  David didn’t send Meshibopheth because of his oath to Jonathan, but he found seven other descendents of Saul’s and sent them.

            Israel fought some more wars with the Philistines.  David got old and can’t go fight with the men anymore.

Day 97 2 Samuel 16-18

            David had some meaningful encounters on his flight from Jerusalem.  He ran into a servant of Mephibosheth’s bringing mounts and provisions for them.  Mephibosheth was the knob-footed grandson of Saul’s, the only remaining male in that line, who David had given some good lands and an honorable position at court.  Mephibosheth himself had gone up to Jerusalem thinking that the people were going to give him back his grandfather’s throne, but his servant had brought out some supplies for David as he passed by.  David declared that all that had belonged to Mephibosheth now belonged to this servant.

            Later, someone else not directly related to Saul, but from the same clan, came out screaming and hurling curses and rocks at David and his officers.  One of them wanted to go kill him for it, but it sounds like David was feeling a little down and he waved them off, saying the Lord has told him to curse them, so let him be.

            Meanwhile, back in Jerusalem, Absolom rides back into the city and a wise and highly trusted advisor of David’s tells him to sleep with his dad’s concubines, which David had left in charge of the city as he fled.  This, the advisor said, would make everyone know that Absolom had made himself obnoxious in his father’s sight and would polarize Israel, making his followers stronger.

            Next, this advisor told Absolom to take a few thousand guys and go track down David.  Before he went though, he checked in with another official who stayed behind.  This guy said that David was way more experienced a fighter and he had good men with him so this plan would definitely not work.  He needed to collect all of Israel to go after David.  Absolom didn’t realize that this guy was still loyal to David though and he sent news to David as soon as he determined that Absolom was going to follow his advice.  That advisor went back to his hometown and hung himself when he found out that Absolom wasn’t going to follow his plan.

            The big battle came and, dispite David’s request that everyone be gentle with Absolom, one ofhis officers found him stuck in a tree and killed him.

            What happens next is kind of funny.  An eager young man who was there when Absolom was killed wanted really badly to go deliver the news to David.  His commander knew that David would not be happy when he heard it though.  After all, he reacted to news of the deaths of Saul and of Saul’s heir by having the people involved killed, so he told this man that he could take the news back some other time after a victory, but not this time.  Then he dispatched some nameless cushite to go tell David in stead.

            The eager man said he wanted to run behind the Cushite then.  He was just so excited, he really wanted to be involved with David getting this good news.  I can practically see his commander rolling his eyes at this and imploring him “Why do you want to go so badly?  You’re not going to get any kind of reward you know.”  But the man insisted still, so he let him go.  He ran so fast he overtook the Cushite back to the city, so he got to deliver the news to David first after all.  Fortunately David didn’t have him killed, he just started mourning the death of his son, while the man who delivered the news of his death stood awkwardly off to the side being confused.

Day 96 2 Samuel 13-15

            Two of David’s sons and one daughter get into a tense relationship.  One son, Amnon, falls in love with his sister and, after some scheming to get her alone, rapes her and then kicks her out of his home.  She’s devastated by what’s happened and runs away to live with the other brother, Absolom.  Absolom does some scheming of his own and murders Amnon for it later.

            Absolom went into exile after that, but he was tricky, and after a while he set up a series of events that got him back in David’s good graces.  He had an old widow approach the king and give him this story about one of her sons killing the other and got him to feel sympathetic for her and for her hypothetical son who was in danger of being killed by the village for revenge.  After David vowed by God to protect her remaining son (I really wish he would quit vowing things all the time, it’s going to come back on him eventually) someone else pointed out that this situation was just like Absolom’s.  David then allowed Absolom to come back to Jerusalem, but he was not allowed to see the king.

            After a couple years back in Jerusalem, Absolom hatched another plan and got invited back into David’s presence anyway.

            Once he was reestablished, Absolom got immediately to work on furthering his political ambitions.  Every time someone from Israel came to Jerusalem to petition the king for something or other, Absolom would meet them at the gate, listen sympathetically and say “Boy, that’s a legit case, it’s really too bad the king doesn’t have a representative you could talk to about that.  If I  were appointed judge, then I would totally help you out with that.  It’s too bad I’m not though.”

            After he’d made lots of friends, he invited a bunch of officials to come with him to Hebron, where he had all his agents celebrate and yell his name as he walked into the city.  Davids officials came home and reported that the people favored Absolom and David was so shaken up he fled Jerusalem, I guess under the assumption that Absolom was about to stage a coup.