David brought the ark of the lord to Jerusalem and celebrated with a lot of music. He was about to build a temple for the ark too, but God told him not to via a nearby prophet. God also told David that He would raise up David’s son and establish his rule forever. This son would build a house for God and God will be his father, never withdrawing His love. David’s son was Solomon who did build the temple and I don’t think God ever did get really angry with Solomon. Israel hardly lasted forever though, under the rule of David’s line. It split into two nations and then a few generations later both were taken prisoner and carted off to Babylon. I think a lot of people would argue that this promise to David is actually about Jesus. The word son seems to be pretty much interchangeable with a more general idea of a descendant in a lot of these stories and Jesus was a descendant of David’s.
With God happy, David won battle after battle with the Israelite army against everyone around them. Everything was going great until David ordered a census taken of all the fighting men in Israel. For some reason, this was a horrible, sinful thing for him to have done. This story is really strange, but it already came up at the end of 2 Samuel so there’s no real need to go over it again.
David had a son, Solomon, and he wanted to start early cashing in on God’s promises about the son of David. David made a lot of preperations for the temple Solomon would build, saying that Solomon was young and inexperienced so he was just getting things set up for him, he was just helping. My mom used to help me write essays the same way when I was young. It can be a little frustrating.
At the end of his life, David made Solomon king of Israel and delegated groups of Levites to different tasks around the temple according to their families. Then chapters 23 through 26 of 1 Chronicles give a breakdown of the Levite family tree and the divisions of the priests. Levites were assigned by David to be musicians, gatekeepers, treasurers and other things in the new temple. The word prophecy is used around the musicians a lot, which seems like a new development. The role of music so far in scripture seems like it’s mostly been to talk about how awesome God is or to record some historical event in verse so people will remember it better. Music seems to be a big deal to David though and these temple musicians sound like they actually have some connection to God through their music. This raises further issues though because, if that’s true, and being a musician is supposed to give these Levites the ear of the Lord, David is way overstepping his authority appointing them. Kings don’t get to make prophets, prophets make kings.
The rest of the book is a list of military and government officials under David’s administration up until Solomon is crowned king and David handed over to him the plans for the temple. David had drawn up plans for every part of the temple in such detail that there were already designated weights for the gold to be used for the forks and sprinkling bowls inside. David was not taking any chances on this temple not turning out the way he wanted it. From the story in 1 Kings it sounded like Solomon had no trouble planning and building the temple on his own, but by this account, it seems that all Solomon really needed to do was say go and David’s temple would essentially start building itself.
David then took up a collection from the whole assembly for the building fund, gave thanks to God, had Solomon acknowledged as the new king of Israel a second time, and then died.
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