Now that the civil war in Israel is over and David is king of all Israel, will he take up the completion of the conquest of the Promised Land? It was a conquest that laid dormant for centuries. We get an answer in the very next passage, 2 Samuel 5, verses 6 through 12.
David gives the conquest of Canaan new life. First order of business, take Jerusalem. Israel never had control of Jerusalem until this point. Jerusalem had always been occupied by other people, like the Jebusites. Though they taunt David, and though it seemed a very difficult mission to flush the Jebusites out of the city, the Lord was with David, and he took it.
This is how Jerusalem became the capital city of Israel. David then began expanding the city, including constructing his palace.
We see in this section, verses 6-12, two important statements. In verse 10, “the Lord God Almighty was with him,” and in verse 12, “the Lord had established him.” Clearly, God was at work, and David invited God to do that work. We’re going to reflect further in a post later in the week. For now, let’s see how this chapter continues. Verse 13 states that, “After he left Hebron, David took more concubines and wives in Jerusalem, and more sons and daughters were born to him.”
The author of the story of David has been coming back to this subplot repeatedly as he has told us about David’s life. David and women. First David married, Michal, daughter of King Saul. Let’s keep a tally: 1 wife.
Then when David fled Saul’s house, Saul forcibly divorced David and Michal, giving her in marriage to another man. At that point David was single and fleeing for his life. 1 ex-wife.
During his fugitive years, David eventually married Ahinoam. 1 ex-wife, 1 current wife.
Soon after that, he met Abigail who was both beautiful and intelligent, and he married her too. 1 ex-wife, 2 current wives.
In the next few years, the floodgates opened, and he married four more women. 1 ex-wife, 6 current wives.
As we learned last week in this post, David made the peace deal contingent on getting his first wife back, which meant the authorities had to break up Michal and her new husband whom she had been with longer than David! 0 ex-wives, 7 current wives.
Now we read that he married more women and had concubines, which were like secondary wives or maybe even sex slaves. Though I’m peeking ahead, eventually, we will learn that David had twelve wives, and who knows how many concubines. Clearly, David has a problem. Yes, it was culturally normal in that day, especially for monarchy, but that doesn’t make polygamy right. Culture does not always tell us God’s heart or what is best for us. God’s standard from the very beginning, Genesis chapter 2, is that marriage is one man and one woman becoming one flesh, and that’s it.
Therefore, this sin in David’s life is unacceptable. How, then, can he be called a man after God’s own heart? That area of David’s life was not in line with God’s heart. This reminds us that God is not expecting perfection. He loves us despite our failings. Our failings do not void us from participating in the mission of his Kingdom. We’re going to put a pin in this subplot because in just a few weeks, the subplot will become the main plot.
Turning back to the conquest, we learn that the Philistines who defeated Saul reenter the story. What will they do? We find out in the next post.
Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash
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