Summary #19

Weekly Summary
1 Chronicles 17-20, 2 Samuel 7-12, Some Psalms (Other Passages Between)

Our hero, David, is settled on the throne, and in fact has been given a rest from all his enemies. Like many men with time off, his mind turns to starting a building project. Since his own house is just fine, he suggests to Nathan, the prophet, that he should build a house for the Lord, whose dwelling was still a tent. While this seems like a fine idea to Nathan, the Lord is not so excited about the plan. He basically says, "Have I complained about living in a tent?"

Lest David misunderstand, God goes on to tell him that he has taken him from shepherd boy to king, and instead of David making him a house, he will establish the House and Line of David -- his descendents will occupy the throne forever. Instead of David, a man with blood on his hands, building the house, his son will do it. David writes still more songs and Psalms of praise for the faithfulness of the Lord and for his promises.

Yet all is not quiet on the enemy front: David engages in a series of battles that lead us to believe that the "rest from his enemies" is over. David takes on the Philistines, and beats them. He takes on Moab, and beats them. He beats Hadadezer, and takes men and chariots as loot... then when the Syrians come to the rescue of Hadadezer, David beats all 22,000 of them. He's on quite the winning streak here. Some of the enemies of those he defeated take the shortcut, and bring him tribute before he takes if from them in battle. He defeats the Edomites as well, and as the writer of 2 Samuel puts it, "David made a name for himself." I wonder what his nickname was....

Putting away his sword for a bit, David asks about the descendents of his dear friend, Jonathan. He finds out that his crippled son, Mephibosheth is still alive. David takes him to live with him and eat from his table, and restores the family lands of Saul to Mephibosheth. He shows great kindness to the grandson of his enemy, and makes him part of his household.

In the meanwhile, there is a death in Ammon -- the king, an ally of David -- has died, and so David sends emmisaries to comfort Hanun, the new king. Hanun's advisors, though, convince him that David is really sending spies to see how easy it would be to take over the place, so Hanun does the obvious (?!?) and shaves half of each of David's servants, and cuts their tunics off at the hips. The new short tunics and facial hair styles apparently don't please these guys -- they are "greatly ashamed". In fact, David tells them just to stay at Jericho until they don't look so goofy.

Coming off such a brazen attack on David's men, Hanun realizes pretty quickly that he's in hot water, and employs a bunch of Syrians to help in the approaching battle. Joab, David's commander, realizes that they are using a different battle strategy, and he will be facing Ammonites in the front, and Syrians at the rear, and so he asks his brother to take half the men to battle the Ammonites while he takes care of the Syrians. They promise to help each other if the need arises, but it turns out the the Syrians fled pretty quickly, and the Ammonites didn't stick around to see how they would fare without the hired help.

So, David continues his winning streak, and is faithful in devoting the spoils of his battles to God, but he doesn't get to build the temple that he wanted to build for the Lord. What's next for our warrior friend? Keep reading this week, as the drama turns domestic....