SERIES J --- THE WARRIOR KING --- LESSON 13

KING DAVID

DAVID IS ANOINTED KING OF JUDAH

From 2 Samuel 2:1-3:1

After the death of Saul, David talked with Adonai about going back home. ‘Shall I go back to one of the cities of Judah?’ he asked. ‘Go,’ Adonai replied. ‘Where?’ David asked. ‘To Hebron,’ Adonai Commanded. David took his two wives, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail of Carmel and his men and their families and moved to Hebron. There the leaders of Judah came and anointed David king over their tribe. When David learned that the men of Jabesh-Gilead had buried Saul, he sent messengers to them with a special note from him. ‘May Adonai reward you richly for being faithful to your king and giving him a decent burial,’ he said. ‘May Adonai be faithful to you, as I will be also, for doing this. Now that Saul is dead, I ask you to be my loyal followers and make me your king as the house of Judah has done.’ In the meantime, Saul’s commander Abner, had gone to Mahanaim to make Saul’s son Ish-bosheth king over Israel, including Gilead, Ashuri, Jezreel, Ephraim, the tribe of Benjamin and the rest of the territory of Israel. Ish-bosheth was forty years old when he became king and he reigned for two years. David reigned in Hebron over the people of Judah for seven and one-half years. Before long the tension increased between the forces of David and the forces of Ish-bosheth. On one occasion Ish-bosheth’s commander Abner, gathered some of his warriors and started toward David’s territory. David’s commander Joab, gathered some of his warriors and went out to meet them, confronting them at the Pool of Gibeon. Joab’s group sat on one side of the pool and Abner’s group on the other side. At last Abner had a suggestion. ‘Choose some of your brave young warriors, and I will choose an equal number of mine,’ he said. ‘Let them fight it out.’ ‘Good,’ said Joab. ‘Let them stand up and fight.’ Each commander chose twelve of his bravest warriors and they met in mortal combat. They were so equally matched that they grabbed one another by the hair and plunged their swords into one another at the same time. The twelve men of each side fell to the side of the pool dead. For a long time after that the place was called Helkath-hazzurim, [Field of Swords.] This sword play started a battle which ended in the defeat of Abner and the men of Israel who were with him. The three sons of Zeruiah, Joab, Abishai and Asahel, were fighting on David’s side. Asahel ran so fast that he was often compared to a deer running in a field. This fast-running Asahel took off after Abner, who was trying to get away. ‘Is that you, Asahel?’ Abner asked, looking around. ‘It certainly is!’ Asahel answered. ‘You had better get out of here,’ said Abner. ‘Go chase one of the young soldiers and take your plunder from him instead of trying to get me.’ But Asahel wouldn’t listen to him. ‘I’m telling you to go away,’ Abner repeated. ‘I don’t want to kill you. How could I face your brother Joab then?’ But Asahel kept right on coming after Abner. Abner swung around and jabbed the butt end of his spear through Asahel, pushing it through his body until it came out his back. Asahel fell to the ground, dying. As the others of David’s forces came along, they stopped at the place where Asahel had been killed. By this time Joab and Abishai were after Abner. When evening came they had come to the Hill of Ammah, which is before Giah on the road which leads to the desert near Gibeon. The men of Benjamin quickly came to Abner’s aid on the top of the hill. Abner called down to Joab, ‘Are we going to keep on fighting like this, killing each other forever? When will you tell your men to stop chasing their Israelite brothers?’ ‘I had planned to stop before you mentioned it,’ Joab answered. ‘If you had said that this morning, we would have gone home then.’ Then Joab sounded the trumpet to end the battle and his men headed home with him. Abner went back to Mahanaim, marching all night with his men, across the Jordan valley, over the Jordan River and on through Bithron. When Joab counted his men, there were only nineteen missing, in addition to Asahel. But Abner’s forces and the men of Benjamin had hosted about three hundred and sixty men. Joab and his men took Asahel back home and buried him in his father’s grave in Bethlehem. After that, Joab and his men marched through the night and reached Hebron at daybreak. There followed a long period of rivalry between David’s forces and Saul’s. As time passed, Saul’s forces became weaker while David’s became stronger.

COMMENTARY

THE POOL OF GIBEON

Six centuries before Moshiach, the powerful Babylonian army broke down the walls of Gibeon. They threw huge limestone blocks into the city’s water system, filling the Pool of Gibeon to the top with stone and rubble. As the centuries passed, a layer of soil built up over the mouth of the pool until every sign of its location was hidden from view. When archaeologists came to explore the site of ancient Gibeon in 1956, they could see nothing but a crop of tomatoes growing in the field. But the archaeologists cleared away the soil and began to dig deeper. They discovered traces of the old city wall and a circle of stones set close inside and around its perimeter. Thinking they had discovered a shallow cistern; the diggers began the hard work of clearing the pool. They filled many carts with loads of rubble, always expecting to reach the bottom with the next spade full. They dug deeper and deeper until the walls of the pit were higher than a man’s head. At that point they uncovered a winding stone staircase that circled around the inside wall of the pool. Almost five feet wide, each step had been carved out of the rock, leaving a low row of stone handrails along the inside edge. As they passed baskets of fill from hand to hand up the spiral staircase, the workmen measured the depth of the pool by the number of steps they had uncovered. Forty-two were unearthed before they struck the bottom of the pool. But though they had dug down almost four stories, the stone stairs did not stop at the floor of the pit. They continued to go down through a tunnel that circled deeper into the earth. Five stories below the floor of the pit the diggers broke into an underground chamber flooded by a pool of water. Tests showed that the spring water was as pure in the twentieth century as it had been thousands of years before.