Understanding the Old Testament - Lesson 14

Understanding the Old Testament 
Dr. Miles Van Pelt
ot102-14 
Samuel 
Lesson Transcript
 

We've now come to the book of Samuel, which is the third book in the former prophets, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. In Hebrew, the book of Samuel is just considered a single book. Its translation into Greek about, you know, 100 years before the time of Christ, something we now call the Septuagint, created a much larger work due to the increased word count in the translation from Hebrew to Greek. That is, it takes more words in Greek to translate Hebrew and so the scrolls became too small to contain all the words. And so, just for practical reasons of translation, what was considered one book is now two books. The Septuagint, or that Greek translation, just considered Samuel and Kings one whole book altogether, and the theme there is kingship throughout.

In terms of contents, the three main characters in the book of Samuel are Samuel himself, the last judge, who was also a prophet and a priest, Saul, Israel's first king, and David, Israel's most famous king. So, Samuel, Saul, and David. The climax of the book of Samuel appears in 2 Samuel 7, which contains the Davidic covenant. That is where God makes a covenant with David that his house and his offspring would always have someone sitting on the throne of Israel. In terms of history and geography, this is taking place in the land of Canaan, which is going to focus on Jerusalem, and it occurs from the birth, it begins with the birth of Samuel in approximately 1100 BC, and it goes all the way down to the death of David in 971 BC, which is about 130 years in the book of Samuel. The purpose of the Book of Samuel is to provide the answer to the crisis of kingship that appeared in the Book of Judges.

Remember, in the book of Judges, we have the saying four times, in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes, and we have that now. So, the book of Samuel is going to be answering or attending to that problem, the fact that there's no king in Israel, and how is that going to look for Israel? Of course, there was, in fact, a king in Israel during the days of Judges. It was the Lord himself, and so this request is a response to Israel's lack of faith that Yahweh was indeed their king. This reality is confirmed by the Lord's commentary on the situation in 1st Samuel 8:4 to 8 when the people ask for a king, and Samuel is grieved by it. Samuel prays to the Lord, and the Lord says to Samuel, listen to the voice of the people regarding all that you say, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. So, Israel's request for a king is the rejection of Yahweh as king over them, and we'll talk about that a little bit later. 

In terms of genre, the book of Samuel is once again a classic Hebrew narrative, a combination of events and dialogue recorded as theological history, that is, history for the purpose of interpreting the events recorded. It's not just the raw interpretation of history. It's not just fact after fact after fact. It's fact and explanation, fact and explanation. Not everything is recorded. Those things that are recorded are selective for telling the account of this covenant history for the Bible. In terms of date and authorship, the book is once again anonymous, just like Joshua, Judges, and Kings, but some early Jewish tradition names Samuel as the composer of 1 Samuel 1 to 24, and then the rest to the prophets Nathan and Gad, and that's a possibility. We know that these prophets wrote things down and kept records, but it is technically anonymous, and we don't know who wrote it.

In terms of outline and contents, there are several different ways to get at the content in terms of this outline. If you have too detailed of an outline, you will miss the flow, too general, and will miss the message. Given that kingship dominates both Samuel and Kings, and some traditions have held these books together, like the Septuagint, one helpful outline displays the content in seven major sections with David as the midpoint. You can see with this outline on the screen that there are seven sections in both Samuel and Kings together. You can see how it begins with Samuel and Eli, progresses to Samuel and Saul, moves on to Saul and David, and then right at the center, David by himself. Backing out again, we have Solomon, the divided kingdom, and the southern kingdom. So this outline provides you with the basic content in terms of who's at work in these narratives, and it provides you kind of a theological point that David is at the center of it all.

On this next slide, you'll see a more detailed accounting of the life of David. We won't go over it, but I wanted you to have it so that you can take a look at the life of David and see how it is shaped in kind of the A-B-C-B-C-A patterns. It's a highly structured narrative. It's not just a random accounting of how things are working, but there are things at work.

The book of Samuel is bookended or set off by two poems that appear within the larger narrative complex. At the very beginning, there is 1 Samuel 2:1 to 10, and this is Hannah's Psalm of Thanksgiving. And then there is 2 Samuel 22, verses 2 to 51, and this is David's Psalm of Thanksgiving. So the book of Samuel is bracketed at strategic places by these songs that help us to interpret the narrative. Both psalms or poems in Samuel belong to the formal category known as a Thanksgiving psalm, and we'll talk about that when we get to the book of Psalms in more detail, but we know it's a Thanksgiving psalm because of the particular content and shape of it. All Thanksgiving psalms have five basic parts, an introduction, an account of the psalmist's misery, an appeal to God, an account of rescue, and then the psalmist's testimony.

There are two primary metaphors in Hannah's song. The first is the metaphor rock for God, that God is Hannah's rock, and then God is raising the horn of his anointed, so rock and horn. We've encountered the metaphor rock in Deuteronomy and the Psalms, we'll see it again, and it relates to God being either our refuge, the rock of refuge, or our source of salvation, the rock of salvation. And then the horn is that which describes God's victory in battle. The horn metaphor is descriptive of victory, especially deliverance from one's enemies. Hannah's song teaches that.

One, Yahweh delivers. Two, Yahweh judges. Three, Yahweh reigns.

The conclusion is that the anointed king of Yahweh will be exalted from what appears to be a humble beginning. That's the song of Hannah. David's Thanksgiving song is a full-fledged Thanksgiving song.

The metaphor rock occurs five times there, just like the song of Yahweh or Moses in Deuteronomy 32, but it also uses the horn metaphor, so rock and horn for both of these Thanksgiving psalms. Note that both David and Hannah's songs begin and end in the same way, beginning with the rock and horn and ending with the victory of the anointed king. The conclusion to the matter is this, for these psalms that bracket the Samuel narratives: Yahweh is the rock of salvation and refuge, and he will raise the horn of his anointed in victory. According to the book of Samuel, Yahweh has done this or achieved this first in David and then in Solomon, but he will ultimately do this when it's fulfilled in Jesus, not just a human king, but the incarnate god-man or king of kings, and we'll see that as we talk about kingship in just a minute. 

The most important thing in terms of understanding the Book of Samuel is understanding the notion of kingship and the resulting Davidic covenant that is a covenant of kingship. So we're going to take some time here to kind of trace the theme of kingship throughout the Bible and see why kingship is such a significant feature of the biblical text of Samuel and why it plays so large in the rest of the biblical narrative. You can see in your slide that we're going to have some biblical-theological trajectories in kingship, that is, what does the Bible teach us about God's kingship and humanity's kingship, and especially as it relates to Israel and the Messiah or the anointed one? The very beginning of the whole concept of kingship when it comes to God's people appears in Genesis 17, verses 1 to 6 and then 16, where we have the seed of Abraham, covenant confirmation, the covenant sign, and a name change here in Genesis 17, that is, we get the covenant of circumcision and Abraham becomes Abraham. In the context of that, you can see on two occasions that the whole promise of kingship is a part of the Abrahamic covenant. Consider, for example, Genesis 17:6, which says, "I will make you exceedingly fruitful and I'll make you into nations, and kings shall come from you." And something similar in Genesis 17:16. So the promise of kingship is rooted in the Abrahamic covenant.

Next, we encounter the promise of kingship in Jacob's blessing of the 12 tribes in Genesis 49. Where we see in 49:10, Jacob prophesies this, "The scepter, which belongs to the king, will not depart from Judah nor the ruler's staff from between his feet until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his." So in Genesis 17, we find out that this special messianic king is going to come from the tribe of Israel, and in Genesis 49, we understand now that it's not just any one of the 12 tribes of Israel, but specifically the tribe of Judah. So we've got our spotlight getting narrower and narrower in terms of this kingship trajectory. 

In the book of Deuteronomy, kingship is provided for in the Mosaic covenant. That is, the Lord understands that he will have a king over his people and so he stipulates what that king will look like and we have qualifications, restrictions, and duties. First, we have the qualifications number and this appears actually in Deuteronomy 17:14 to 20, if you're interested. The qualifications are two.This king must be chosen by Yahweh and he must be an Israelite. The restrictions are threefold. He can't have too many horses, especially from Egypt. He can't have too many wives because it'll leave his heart astray and he can't have too much silver and gold. Now, I want you to put those restrictions in your mind. Not too many horses, not too many wives, not too much gold or silver because when we get to the Book of Kings and we talk about Solomon, we'll find that he violated all three of these restrictions and it begins the downfall of that kingship. And finally, the duties of the king. The duties of the king. He is to copy the Torah or the law. He's to read and study the Torah or the law every day and he's to obey it. He's to copy it. He's to read it, to obey it. So, Israel's king is not going to be like all the other nations that go out to warn this great warrior king. He's going to be a little bit of an academic nerd whose job is to study God's word and obey it. That's what a true king does. He obeys the word of God.

Now, we come to the book of Samuel. So, we know a couple of things. We know number one that kings are going to come from Abraham. They're going to come through the line of Judah and the king is going to have to be an Israelite. He's going to be chosen by God. He's not going to have to have horses, wives, or money and he's supposed to copy the law and read it. Okay, now we're in 1 Samuel 8 and here we go. Israel asks for a king but this is not a happy moment. This is a sad moment in 1 Samuel 8 for several reasons. Look, in verses 5 and 20, we get recorded twice the nature of the request in 1 Samuel 8 verses 5 and 20. First, they ask for a king to judge Israel. Second, so they can be like all the other nations, and third, so that guy can go out and fight our wars. Okay, now the thing about this that makes this so tragic is Yahweh was Israel's judge and they weren't like all the other nations and Yahweh always went out before them and fought. So again, we're going to see according to this particular text that this was a rejection of Yahweh's kingship.

Israel's request for a king is not necessarily bad because they knew it was coming but the motive behind it was bad because they were rejecting Yahweh as their king, not waiting for his messianic king. And again, it's worth reading that particular text where it says, and the Lord said to Samuel, obey the voice of this people and all that they are saying to you or all that they're asking for. They have not rejected you, Samuel, but they have rejected me from being king over them. And that's what makes this such a tragic moment in the life of Israel. 

Well, the Lord answers their request and he gives them in 1 Samuel 9 a king named Saul. He is an Israelite and he is a Benjaminite and he's from Gibeah. Now let me tell you a few things about that. Number one, Saul's name, and you can see it on your slide, I've put it there in Hebrew. Saul's name means this, what was asked for. So Israel asked for a king and they got exactly what they wanted. One of the things you'll realize is that Saul was a tall guy and who were the tall guys back then? The giants, people like Goliath, the Canaanites, the Anakim. Also, he is from Benjamin of Gibeah. And you recall what happened in Benjamin of Gibeah at the end of the book of Judges in Judges 19. They were the ones who became like Sodom and Gomorrah and had to be destroyed in that town. And so really the Benjaminites from Gibeah are Canaanites. And so Yahweh is giving his people exactly what they're asking for, a king like all the other nations, a Canaanite king.

It moves on from there in 1 Samuel 10. Saul is anointed by Samuel. The enabling power of the spirit of Yahweh comes on him.He's given a sign of prophecy, the divine presence. He's given another heart and then he's taken by Lot and then he goes to Gibeah, which should sound the warning bells, dun dun dun. Gibeah is, you know, it's the worst possible place for Israelites to come from. In 1 Samuel 11, Saul is confirmed as king.There's opposition, victory in battle, and the renewal of the kingdom.

Finally, in 1 Samuel 12, Samuel engages in a lawsuit with the people saying, I've given you exactly what you wanted. This is going to be bad news for you. I'm warning you, but you asked for it and you got it. You asked for it and you got it. Finally, we know that Saul is rejected as king shortly thereafter in 1 Samuel 15. He's rejected for basically two reasons, basically two very interesting reasons. First, he's rejected because he wanted to go out to battle. Samuel wasn't there and he didn't want to go out to battle without offering a sacrifice so he said, I'll offer the sacrifice myself, which was something he shouldn't have done. But it appears to be some kind of religious zeal, but it was disobedience to the word of the Lord. His second offense was in 1 Samuel 15 when he was commanded to go out and completely obliterate the Amalekites under the holy war rule again. And he didn't. He had compassion on the king and the livestock and he said, we brought these back so that we could worship with Yahweh and have a big party and celebration. And the Lord said, no, I wanted that to be destroyed and put to the ban. That was your job as an act of faith to do it and you disobeyed me, you disobeyed me. The text reads like this, for rebellion, 1 Samuel 15:23 (on the screen), for rebellion that Saul did is like the sin of divination and arrogance, like the evil of idolatry. So witchcraft and idolatry, because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he that is the Lord has rejected you as king. It's a sad day. 

So one of the things we learned in the book of Deuteronomy is that the king was to know God's word and to obey God's word.And here we see that Saul could not do it or did not do it, even though he had the enabling presence of the Lord and he had to guide him, he did not do it. 

Well, that's going to change in 1 Samuel 13. The Lord is going to choose for himself another king, another king, a king after his own heart. That is not after, the king is not going to have a heart like the Lord. That is, the Lord is going to choose for himself a king according to his own will or desire, 1 Samuel 13. If you would like to know more about that, I've covered that in some detail in my survey, Old Testament survey lectures for biblical training in the upper-level course, and you can go there and there'll be a link at the bottom for you to see that.

We move then to 1 Samuel 16 where David is anointed as king in the first half and Saul is unanointed as king in the second half of that chapter. And the spirit of the Lord comes upon him and then an evil spirit comes on Saul in those chapters. 1 Samuel 17 is the very famous David and Goliath episode where David defeats Goliath. And it's the confirmation of his kingship. So Goliath appears as the enemy of God's people.Saul encounters him with fear and won't go out. David encounters him with no fear because he knows that that guy is impugning the Lord and his people, and so he is going to go and take after him. And that, in some sense, 1 Samuel 17 is demonstrating the reality of 1 Samuel 16. That is, 1 Samuel 16, David is anointed king, Saul is unanointed as king, and 1 Samuel 17 is proof in the pudding that David is that king. Then in 1 Samuel 18, what happens there is David defeats Goliath, Jonathan, Saul's son, recognizes David's anointing, and Jonathan takes off his royal clothes, the clothes of the first-born heir, he would have been the successor, and gives them to David and says, you are the man, subsequently to that because of what's happened. Jonathan recognized it. This brings us then to the climax.

So David is anointed king, he's shown to be king, he's recognized as king, and then finally in 2 Samuel 7, the Lord enters into a covenant with him. Now what's interesting in terms of the context here, we don't have too much time, but by this point, David has wrested from all of his enemies, he's built his own house, that is, his palace, and he looks and he sees that the Lord does not live in a house but in a tent. And he says I'm going to build the Lord a great house or temple. And he asks Nathan, should I do it? And Nathan says, yes, the Lord is with you. And then Nathan comes back the next day and says, hold on. And the Lord speaks to Nathan, the Lord speaks to Nathan the prophet saying this, David, when have I ever lived in a house? I've always lived in a tent. And, I'm not going to have you make me a house, I'm going to make you a great house, which is ironic because David already has a house. So he's not talking about a house, but he's talking about a household, a dynasty. And so in 2 Samuel 7, David's best efforts to try to do something for the Lord backfire in some sense, because what can we ever do for the Lord? The Lord says, hey, I'm here to do for you, which is the good news of the gospel.

So the Lord enters into a covenant with David here, a unilateral covenant, which we've seen before, that promises to him that his household would be the household of the King. So in Genesis 12, we see that the seed of Abraham would produce a King. In Genesis 49, we see that the King would come from Judah. And now here in 2 Samuel 7, it's going to come from the line of David. You can see here the outline of the covenant and what it entails. It entails this, after the historical prologue, this is a covenant of grant. The Lord is going to give David, one, a great name, two, a permanent place, three, rest from his enemies, and four, a royal house. 

Now what's interesting is that the great name theme comes back to the Tower of Babel and the patriarch Abraham. The Tower of Babel, they wanted to make themselves a 

great name. And the Lord said, and the Lord dispersed that and came to Abraham and said, I'm going to make your name great. Okay. Another interesting thing, he's going to make David a house, but David already has a house. And so we know that that's speaking beyond itself. And then an eternal dynasty, that is a dynasty that does not come to an end, a house, a throne, an eternal kingdom, adoption as a son, and irrevocable, steadfast love. This is an amazing covenant, an amazing covenant that we have here.

But there is the failure of the Davidic covenant coming. 

Now look back here again on this slide, in terms of the royal house and the eternal dynasty, it's going to have a house, a throne, an eternal kingdom, adoption as a son, and irrevocable, steadfast love. But you can see on the slide now that even though we're going get the climax of the Davidic line in the next book, Kings, there's going to be a quick failure. Number one, David is a man of the grave. That is, he is no longer with us. So he cannot be the eternal king. Number two, David's sons, beginning with Solomon, did not follow in his ways as one devoted to Yahweh. David was not perfect, but he was not an idolater. This reality comes to an initial climax in Kings 11:11 to 13, where it says, "Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, since this has been your practice, you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I've commanded you. I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant.For the sake of David, your father, I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However, I will not tear away all of the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son for the sake of David, my servant, and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen." 

Now, when we get to the book of Kings, we'll talk about why Solomon lost the kingdom, but really what you have is in first Kings 8, the climax of the theocratic kingdom of God, that is God's rule over God's people with God's king in God's house. Chapters 9, 10, and 11, three chapters later, that kingdom is torn from the house of David. So once again, even built within it, this human line of kingship, just like Moses is the covenant mediator, just like the covenant that can't be kept, just like the land that points beyond itself. So these human kings are going to point beyond themselves in the same way.

The resurrection of the Davidic line quickly will just come almost a thousand years later after Solomon, where we have in Matthew 1:1, we have the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Look at how the gospel writer Matthew is taking you back in the line of Jesus, straight through David and Abraham. Abraham is where the promise began for kingship. David is the fulfillment of that promise, stage one. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of that promise, stage two. Look at Romans 1:13 concerning his son, this gospel promise beforehand, who was descended from David according to the flesh. Second Timothy 2:8, remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David as preached in my gospel. The connection to David, and Jesus in the gospels and the epistles is very strong. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant. Solomon is not the fulfillment of that Davidic covenant. And finally, let's talk quickly about the consummation of the Davidic line.

You can see in the book of Revelation that this Jesus figure is the king of kings, the king of kings, and the king of kings. For example, in Revelation 17:14 on your screen, they'll make war on the lamb and the lamb will conquer them. For he is the Lord of lords and the king of kings and those with him are called and chosen and faithful. Jesus Christ is the king of kings. So as we kind of bring this to a conclusion with the book of Samuel, we can see the book of Samuel and the notion of kingship has its roots way back in the book of Genesis with Genesis 17. And they cast on themselves up to the book of Revelation, Revelation 17, Revelation 19, Revelation 22, where he is the climax of that kingship promise, a promise that spans right now, we're looking at some 4,000 years.

So how is the gospel of kingship and all of that business, the Davidic line, conceived of in the New Testament? There are two spots in the Book of Acts where speeches are given that describe the nature of life in the New Covenant. Acts chapter 2, where the apostle Peter gives a speech, and Acts chapter 13, where the apostle Paul gives his speech. In both speeches, the connection between Jesus and the Davidic line is very strong so we can identify the fulfillment of those promises in this newly inaugurated eschatological age.

I won't read both of them, but I will read those lines out of Paul's in Acts 13:32 and following, just so you get a sense of the significance of the Davidic covenant and kingship in the book of Samuel. This is Acts 13, beginning in verse 32. Paul says, "And we bring to you the good news that God promised to the fathers, so Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.This has been fulfilled to us, their children, by raising Jesus, as it also is written in the second Psalm, you are my son, today I have begotten you. (Remember the promise, sonship or adoption.) And as for the fact that he has raised him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, he has spoken in this way, I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David. Therefore, he also says in another Psalm, you will not let your holy one see corruption. For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption in the grave. But he whom God raised up did not see corruption. Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. And by him, everyone who believes is freed from everything which you could not be freed from by the law of Moses. The king of kings has freed you from all these things, specifically your sin, and allowed you also to be adopted sons and heirs of the new heavens and new earth."

And this all begins kingship notion comes to a climax in the book of Samuel. The Old Testament, in particular in the Bible in general, helps us to see how God fulfills his promises, even though there are sometimes long periods of time where it doesn't seem like that's going to happen. And so in the exile or after Malachi or things like that with the promise of David, it didn't seem like that would ever happen. In some sense, so you can think of it this way, God promised us eschatological permanent enduring kingship, right, around, you know, around not in the 900s of BC, right, and it was lost in 586.  And so for over 500 years, it seemed like an impossible prospect. Even when Israel was granted return in 538 BC to go back to the promised land, they never had a king again. And they never had a temple that was indwelled by the presence of God. And they don't now. And they didn't in the time of Jesus. And, you know, the next time, the next time the true king of Israel walks into that temple, it's when Jesus does it, you know, in his life. And, but, but he wasn't working to restore that earthly temple. He was working for the heavenly temple that we hear about in the book of Revelation, and stuff like that. So yeah, it takes a long time. Think about Abraham receiving the promise of land in 2100 BC and then occupying it in 1400 BC.

That's 700 years, you know. We don't even have a category for that. We think if God doesn't fulfill our promise in five days, or five minutes, it's long. Or think about Abraham was what, 75 when he received the promise? And how old was he when he had Isaac? It's 25 years later, you know. So yeah, you can see that the Lord's timing is not our timing, you know, and, and, and there are the days of heaven and the days of earth and the two are not the same, but they're patterned after each other. So yeah, it reminds me also of the book of Esther in some sense, that question, because you see God's people, you know, at the brink of destruction and you don't see God anywhere, but then at the end, they're saved and, and you, and it's, it's his hiddenness there that shows that he's at work, you know, and that he can be, he can be at work without anyone knowing about it.

So yeah, it's a great question.