A boy asked his folks how WWII started. They were soon arguing. “OK. I see how wars start,” he said. In the battle at Gibeon’s pool, it’s hard to know who struck the first blow. The text simply reads, “each one grasped his opponent by the head and thrust his sword in his opponent’s side” […]
Read More… from December 12, 2023 — Competition Leads To Decimation
Unlike this pool, our church gatherings should be a place of consolation, not confrontation. “Now Abner the son of Ner, and the servants of Ishbosheth the son of Saul, went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon” (2 Sam 2:12). According to 1 Chronicles 8:28-33, this was the ancestral home of both Abner and Saul’s families. Gibeon […]
When defying God’s will, Ishbosheth would discover he couldn’t get far enough away to be safe. You may recall that the territory of Benjamin, home to Saul and his family, ran along the northern border of the much larger tribal allotment of Judah. Evidently, Abner thought his make-believe king, Ishbosheth (whose name ironically means “man […]
Just when life seems to be settling down, another conflict begins, another foe rears his head. For some time, David had been consolidating his grip on the kingdom. From his introduction to the nation as their champion in his battle against Goliath, to his military interventions at places like Keilah, he had shown his prowess […]
A new king for Israel, a man after God’s heart. And a new capital, too, the city of fellowship. Over the ruins of Ziklag and the collapse of Saul’s house, a brighter day dawns. There will be some skirmishes in an attempt by Saul’s remaining family to maintain the kingship, but there are no serious […]
How rare it is to find a warrior with a poet’s heart: resolute in battle and chivalrous afterward. David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam 1:19-27) is a masterpiece of loyalty and love. Yet it has, as its beginning, climax, and ending, these doleful words: “How the mighty have fallen!” (vv 19, 25, 27), […]
David, the veteran of many pitched battles, seeks first to prepare his people for wars to come. The two chief weapons of the Israelite soldier were the sword and the battle bow. One was for hand-to-hand combat and the other for fighting at a distance. In the recent battle in the Jezreel Valley, the Philistine […]
David was far from the battle when he got the news, but his heart wasn’t far from Jonathan. Obviously, 1 and 2 Samuel were originally one volume. The narrative flows seamlessly from the one to the other. The last chapter of 1 Samuel recounts the tragic deaths of Saul and his sons, unknown to David, […]
Read More… from December 1, 2023 — Grim News From The Battlefield
My father used to say, “Failure doesn’t have to be final.” It certainly wasn’t for Jabesh Gilead. “Saul, his three sons, his armorbearer, and all his men died together that same day” (1 Sam 31:6). This caused such panic that local Israelites abandoned their towns “and the Philistines came and dwelt in them” (v 7). […]