There is no other city—not London or Rome, Beijing or Delhi—where God put His name.
We now come to a pivot point in the story, introduced with an overview of David’s whole rule, though he was only at the seven-and-a-half-year point of his reign. “David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty-three years over all Israel and Judah” (2 Sam 5:4-5). As he had moved north from Ziklag to establish a central location in Judah at Hebron, so now he wants to establish his kingdom’s headquarters at Jerusalem, on the border between Judah and Israel. But the decision was not based merely on geographical strategy. Nine times in the book of Deuteronomy, the Lord spoke about a special place in the Promised Land called “the place where the Lord your God chooses” (Deut 12:5), or “the place where the Lord your God chooses to make His name abide” (v 11), or “the place where the Lord your God chooses to put His name” (v 21). At this point in history, it was called Jebus, capital of the Jebusites. Yet it had been Salem in the days of Abraham and Melchizedek, where the king of righteousness and peace had brought bread and wine to the father of the faithful. It was near that place where Abraham brought his son to offer him, and whose king, Adonizedek, had been defeated by Joshua when the sun supernaturally shone to bring victory to Israel. And David had brought Goliath’s head there, perhaps to Skull Hill. Could David have connected the dots, realizing that One would come to this city to die when the sun refused to shine, who is pictured in Melchizedek and Isaac and Joshua, yes, and David, too? The place where they put The Name in accusation over His head? Yes, that place!