Day 95 2 Samuel 8-12

            David conquered pretty much everyone around and collected treasures and keepsakes from his victories, including his former friends the Ammonites following a social gaffe that they tried to war their way out of by hiring an army of Aramean mercenaries from across the Euphrates.  He didn’t make that same mistake that Gideon did and display them as memorials of his own awesomeness. David dedicated all his trophies to the Lord, and everything was good for everybody under his rule.

            His sons became priests somehow.  The first Priests were related to Aaron who was a Levite.  It sounded like all priests were to be from Aaron’s family, but maybe that line was broken or they lost track of it.  It was a long time before this.  Samuel seems to represent a break in the line of priests since he was adopted and all the priests he studied under were killed.  Still, David was from the tribe of Judah.  I would think priest would have to at least be from the tribe of Levi.  Maybe that was one of the perks of being the king’s son.

            In between conquests, David tracked down that last descendant of Saul’s, a lame grandson named Mephibosheth.  He was Jonathan’s son so this gave David a great way to honor his promise to Jonathan that he wouldn’t wipe out the whole line of Saul.  He set Mephibosheth up with all of the lands that had belonged to Saul and put some servants to work on the land to keep Mephibosheth rich and fed and invited him to eat at his own table with his family any time.

Day 94 2 Samuel 4-7

            When he heard that Abner was dead, Ish-Bosheth lost heart.  Then a couple guys came into his house one day and killed him.  They brought the head to David in kind of the same way a cat might leave a starling on your porch but David did not seem very grateful.

            “When I heard news of Saul’s death I killed the man who told me.”  He exclaimed at them.  “How much more angry then do you think I am about your sneaking in and killing an innocent man in his own home?”

            So David had those guys killed too.

            With Saul’s whole family dead though, (except some grandson who was disabled and too young to do anything) all the other tribes came around and followed David.  He ruled for 33 years after that.  He conquered Jerusalem and built a fortress next to it they called the City of David.  It’s still there, you can go on little walking tours of it.  He also defeated the Philistines and made Jerusalem the capital, bringing the ark of the covenant to live there.

            On the way, the oxen stumbled and a priest reached out to steady the ark, but no one was allowed to approach it or touch it, so God killed him.  After that incident, David decided to store the ark at someone else’s house.

            God promises David that He will establish a house for His people and they won’t be oppressed by wicked people any more.  He will establish his kingdom with David’s descendant.  Most Christians who are aware of this prophecy assume this is talking about Jesus.

Day 93 2 Samuel 1-3

            Sorry for the frequent delays.  Once I get caught up again I’m going to try to get a week or two ahead so I have some buffer space again.

            Samuel was so awesome that he got two books, even though he’s dead for the second one.

            In second Samuel, David learns about the death of Saul from a guy who says he helped Saul kill himself.  He’s an Amalekite, which is a strike against him already, then David and his men mourn deeply for Saul and execute the Amalekite messenger for having killed God’s anointed.  I think that’s kind of a technicality, but it wouldn’t be the most obtuse interpretation of God’s will we’ve seen so far.

            When the Lord tells David that it’s a good time to return to Israel, he goes into Hebron and explains that he is now the king of Israel.  The tribe of Judah is on board, but no one else is buying it.  The rest of Israel is following Saul’s son Ish-Bosheth propped up by Saul’s general Abner.  Just as one would expect, things go pretty well for David and the tribe of Judah, but not so hot for Israel.  David starts having lots of sons and stuff, but Ish-Bosheth winds up losing the support of Abner over some accusations regarding one of Saul’s concubines.  Abner actually went to join David over the quarrel, but David sent him away.  Once David’s general heard about what happened though, he had Abner brought back again and killed him, believing the whole thing to be a ploy and that Abner was a spy.

Day 92 I Samuel 28-31

            Now that Samuel’s dead, the Philistines are going to come square off against Saul and his army.  Achish, the king where David’s staying, makes David his personal bodyguard for life.

            Without Samuel to talk to God for him, Saul is really nervous about this fight.  Even though he had expelled all the media from the land, he sets his men to work finding one for him.  That’s medium like someone who talks to the dead that he’s looking for, not like music and movies.

            They find a medium on the forest moon of Endor, I mean in the town of Endor, and she summons Samuel for Saul to question.  Samuel says that Saul is an idiot for even asking, and his nation will be taken from him and given to David.

            Once Achish meets up with the other Philistine leaders, they all kind of flip out about David and his men being there.  They insist that Achish send them back home because they might turn on them in the battle.  It’s a good thing they did too because David returned home just in time to find the whole place plundered and burned to the ground.  Some Amalikite raiders had come through and taken all the goods and the women.  Fortunately they left an ephod, which David was able to use to consult with the Lord.  God told him to pursue the raiders and they got all of their gold and livestock and wives and other valuables back.  They also killed all but a couple hundred of the Amalekites.

            Meanwhile, back at the war, Israel was losing badly.  Saul’s three sons were all killed and on that same day Saul jumped on his own sword when his armor-bearer refused to kill him.  He was hoping to escape the abuse of the Philistines when they caught him.  Once they found his body they took it back to Beth Shan and hung it on a wall.  Some soldiers mounted an expedition to go retrieve it later on, but, more importantly, the Philistines occupied a big chunk of Israel now.

Day 91 I Samuel 25-27

            David petitioned a wealthy Calebite to give his men some supplies, citing the good treatment this guy had received from David’s men at some earlier time.  The Calebite tells David’s men to get lost.  Several things all happen after that in rapid succession.

            First, The Calebite’s wife, Abigail, heard about what had happened, correctly surmised that David was going to swoop in and wipe them all out, and started frantically scrambling to collect bread and oil to run out and give to his army.  Next, David’s messenger’s return with the news from the wealthy Calebite and David immediately rounds up four hundred men to go stomp on this guy.  Abigail and David end up meeting partway, but not until after David had just sworn something along the lines of “May God deal with me however harshly He sees fit if even one male is left of his by morning.”  Of course then Abigail shows up and smooths everything over and it would be pretty ridiculous for David to go wipe out Abigail’s family after that.  It seems for a moment like David has really put his foot in his mout.  He’s sworn this oath to God, but he did it in ignorance, and now there’s no way for him to do what’s right and still uphold his word to God.  Remember what happened to Saul’s army after Saul’s son Jonathan broke that stupid vow that he didn’t even know about.  He just ate some honey off the ground after Saul had sworn that no one would eat anything, and God allowed the Philistine army to escape annihilation at the hands of Israel because of it.

            David doesn’t even seem to register this problem though, and merrily goes back to his camp with Abigail’s supplies.

            As always, God has David’s back on this one though.  When Abigail returns to her husband, he is very drunk and the news of what had happened that day stopped his heart.  Vow fulfilled, David sends word that he would like to take Abigail as his wife.  She accepts.

            David has another encounter with Saul, much like the last one.  Saul catches wind of David’s camp and takes an army to go catch him.  David sneaks in with a couple other guys during the night and steals Saul’s water jug and his spear from right next to his head as he’s asleep.  His men try to get David to kill Saul, but he’s still not okay with killing ‘God’s anointed’ so he just leaves and then comes back in the morning to tell Saul about how he could have killed him again, but didn’t.  Saul again admits David’s superiority in all things and then leaves.

            At this point, it’s pretty clear that Saul’s not going to stop being a problem any time soon to David goes to live among the Philistines.  King Achish gave him and his men a small town to call their own an they spent the next year and four months raiding the country side from there.  They would go into a town and be sure to kill everyone in it before looting all their goods and animals.  That way, when the king asked where they had gone raiding, David could lie to him and say they went out into the Negev somewhere.  David told Achish that he was going into Israel a lot to raid the towns there, which he was pretty happy with.  He figured that with David stirring up all this trouble among the Israelites, they would all hate him forever and he would have to stay and be a loyal subject forever.

  Oh, also, Samuel died.

Day 90 I Samuel 21-24

            David and his men run from Saul through Israel and a lot of different foreign places, and Saul pursued them.  Finally in some mountains, Saul went to relieve himself in a cave and he just happened to enter one that David and his men were hiding in.  David was able to get so close to Saul that he clipped off a bit of Saul’s robe.  His men urged him to kill Saul as this was the fulfillment of God’s promise to deliver him to David, but he refused and actually felt kind of guilty for taking that bit of his robe.

            Once Saul turned to leave the cave, David revealed himself and explained that he was not Saul’s enemy and basically that he could have easily killed Saul but chose not to.  Saul was moved by David’s speech and realized that God was with David and that he would be king.  He asked David to swear not to wipe out his whole family and then he leaves.  David and his men still went up to the stronghold in the mountains though.

Day 89 I Samuel 18-20

            Saul is starting to get concerned about David’s growing popularity.  Everyone knows that David is getting these great military victories all the time and everyone except Saul seems to realize that it’s because God is with him.  Saul reacts mostly by yelling at people and throwing his spear at David a couple times.

            David went to seek refuge with Samuel for a while and when Saul sent men after him, they ended up prophesying with Samuel there in stead.  Twice more Saul sent men, but each time they kept getting caught up in the spirit of the lord and prophesying.  Finally Saul came himself.  He saw what was going on and started prophesying.

            I feel like they mean something different when they say prophesy than I mean when I say prophesy.

            All this time David has cultivated an extremely close relationship with Saul’s son Jonathan.  Like, it kind of sounds like they’re sleeping together, close.  They set up a very Hardy Boys scheme to prove that Saul is out to kill David because Jonathan is having trouble believing it.  Their plan works and Jonathan is convinced, but not before Saul throws a spear at him and calls him a “son of a perverse and rebellious woman.”

            In the end, David and Jonathan part ways with an oath that there be friendship between their families forever.