David the giant-killer might have been a genius on the battlefield, but he was a stinker of a dad and a cheating husband at home. It's all in 2 Samuel.
Second Samuel tells of David doing what King Saul before him could only dream about:
- defeating all his neighboring enemies and securing his borders
- finally capturing Jerusalem, then making it his capital
- uniting all the tribes of Israel into a one sovereign nation.
Back home, with at least seven wives in his harem, he has sex with one of his elite soldier’s wives, Bathsheba. She gets pregnant and David sends her husband on a suicide mission. Then he marries her. The baby boy dies, but Bathsheba will later have another son who will become the next king: Solomon. He’ll kill one of his half brothers to eliminate the competition. Apparently, they weren’t close.
Rape of David's daughter
David’s oldest son and the presumed successor, Amnon, didn’t live long enough to become king. His half-brother Absalom murdered him. He did it because Amnon raped his half sister, who was Absalom's full sister. They were close. She would live with her brother in shame over the rape. Never married, it seems.
David found out about the rape. It made him mad. Yet he did nothing but ignore it.
So, two years later, Absalom ordered his servants to get Amnon drunk and kill him. Then Absalom left the country to live with his grandpa on his mom’s side, a king in what is now the Golan Heights.
David's son leads a coup
David later invites him home but refuses to see him. That makes Absalom so mad that he declares himself king and drives David out of Jerusalem. When their armies meet on the battlefield, as usual, David’s men win. And they kill Absalom when they find him hanging around after the battle. He got his head stuck in a tree.
Israel’s tribal leaders had just gotten used to Absalom as king. But they grudgingly accepted David back.
Family troubles drove many of the stories in his life.
ONE BOOK SPLIT IN TWO
First and Second Samuel were written as one book. But it was too long to fit on a single scroll. So, when Jewish scholars translated it into the international language of the day, Greek, in the decades before Jesus was born, they split it into two books. They did the same with the books of Kings and Chronicles.
WRITER
The writer is anonymous.
TIMELINE
Second Samuel spans most of the 40 years of David’s reign as king, from about 1010-970 BC.
BIG EVENTS
- David writes a funeral song for Saul and Jonathan.
- Civil war: David and his tribe win against all the others.
- Saul’s son King Ishbosheth of Israel is murdered by lousy bodyguards.
- David orders his remarried ex-wife, Michal, to leave her beloved husband and return to David’s harem; she hates him for it.
- All of Israel finally accept David as king.
- David’s men capture the city that becomes Jerusalem.
- David brings Ark of the Covenant and Ten Commandments to Jerusalem.
- David, on his roof, sees Bathsheba bathing below; sex, pregnancy, murder, and marriage follow.
- David secures his borders and conquers neighboring nations, forcing them to obey him.
- Crown prince Amnon rapes his half sister, Tamar.
- Tamar’s full brother, Absalom, orchestrates murder of Amnon.
- Absalom flees the country, comes home, launches a coup, dies in battle.
- David returns after fleeing Jerusalem during the coup.
- David orders a census, God punishes him by killing 70,000 others in a plague.
- David writes song of thanks to God for promising always to protect him and his family.
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LOCATION
Most stories take place in what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories of Gaza and the West Bank.
Some Israelites—ancient ancestors of today’s Jewish people—lived on land they owned east of the Jordan River. That’s now in parts of the countries of Jordan and Syria. David spends time there during Absalom’s coup, which ran David out of Jerusalem.
PURPOSE
Second Samuel is the story of God helping David establish Israel as a sovereign nation that, for the first time has been able to secure its borders and control its neighboring nations.
It also paints the picture of God honoring his promise to stand by David, even when David makes disastrous mistakes. God holds him accountable and punishes him, but stands by him even then. That’s something David apparently thinks is worth singing about. So he does.
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