Thank you for downloading this Wyatt North eBook

Never miss a free book from Wyatt North, and receive FREE inspirational eBooks for your
eReader!
Thousands of readers have already joined. Sign up for free today.
Click here for free eBook offers!
 Michael J. Ruszala
© Wyatt North Publishing, LLC 2015
 Publishing by Wyatt North Publishing, LLC. A Boutique Publishing Company.
“Wyatt North” and “A Boutique Publishing Company” are trademarks of Wyatt North Publishing, LLC.
Copyright © Wyatt North Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof
in any form whatsoever. For more information please visit http://www.WyattNorth.com.
Cover design by Wyatt North Publishing, LLC. Copyright © Wyatt North Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved.
Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition© 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights
Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing
Foreword
Introduction
Israel’s Desire for a King
God’s Rejection of Saul as King
God’s Choice of David
Transition and Danger
David in Flight
“I Will Not Harm the Lord’s Anointed”
Providence Sets the Stage
The Fall of King Saul
King David
The Ark Enters Jerusalem
God’s Covenant with David
David’s Lapse
The Wages of Sin
Absalom’s Rebellion
The Succession to Solomon
David: Father of the Psalter
The Crafting of the Psalms
Categorizing the Psalms
The Psalms: Books I-III
The Psalms: Books IV & V
Conclusion
Foreword
People are fascinated by the concept of royalty. The notion stirs up sentiments of love,
admiration, and hatred. We see ourselves in them, and yet we criticize them at times with
indignation. While most monarchies today have been put aside or at least limited in their
power, the concept of royalty cannot be erased from human consciousness. In the words of
Jesus, Christians pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
The ultimate and most perfect monarchy is that of God himself, the sovereign of all
creation.

Through David and the story of the kingship, God taught us about his governance of the
world and of his people. David was only human and at times the worthy subject of both
praise and severe criticism. But in his relationship with God, we find a model for the
people both then and today: suppleness to God’s will; wholehearted pursuit of
righteousness; sincere repentance from sin; mercy for others; and true worship of God, who
alone is worthy.

David is also the father of the Psalms, which are an inspired model of prayer in its diverse
forms and which have been perennially taken upon the lips of God’s people both in
community and personally. These Psalms, expressing the spectrum of human emotion as
opened up to God, became favorite points of reference for Jesus, the Apostles, and also the
Church Fathers. Meanwhile, the prophets in the Old Testament were incessant in holding up
David as the model for the monarchy and placing the people’s hopes in his line.

This book introduces the lay person to themes in David’s life and in the Psalms in a way
that seeks to be faithful to Scripture’s intent and also relies on the light of faith in Jesus as
the son of David.
Introduction
King and warrior, poet and musician, man of faith and gentleness, David has captured the
hearts and imaginations of generations for over three millennia. His name occurs over a
thousand times in the Bible, including fifty-three times in the New Testament. The story of
David and his bloodline is featured in six books of the Old Testament. David is also the
principal inspired poet of the Psalms, which have been appreciated throughout the
centuries for their universal appeal, depth, and spectrum of human emotion as lifted up to
God.

In David’s royal line lay the hopes of the people, even more so when centuries later they
were under foreign domination. It is written in Psalm 89 in God’s voice, “I have sworn to
David my servant: I will make your dynasty stand forever and establish your throne through
all ages” (Psalm 89:4-5). His kingdom was the greatest in the history of Israel. Under
David, the children of Israel secured more control of the Promised Land by clearing away
their enemies. His kingdom even expanded into an empire beyond the tribal boundaries,
with his son Solomon controlling territory from the Red Sea to the Euphrates River. He
was a force to be reckoned with because, the Bible tells us, the Spirit of the Lord was upon
him for a mission.

In the Bible, David was typically the standard to which other kings were held. Having trust
in God and a strong desire to please him, David was alluded to by the prophet Samuel as
“a man after [God’s] own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). Though esteemed as an ideal man and
king, David was not always able to stand firm in the face of temptation. He sinned greatly
on a number of occasions, but his heart was always supple to God’s ‘rod’ and ‘staff,’ which
led to sincere repentance (Psalm 23:4). He did not presume God’s mercy, but instead
considered how he had offended God and returned to ‘right paths’ (Psalm 23:3). He was
counted as righteous, and Jesus also held him in high regard and often recited his psalms.

After capturing the city from the Jebusites, David established Jerusalem as his capital.
Jerusalem has been pivotal in world history and is a holy city to Jews, Christians, and
Muslims. When bringing God’s Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem for the first time, David
“danced before the LORD with all [his] might” (2 Samuel 6:5). In Psalm 69 we read
David’s words, “zeal for your house has consumed me” (Psalm 69:9). David’s zeal was to
build a Temple for the Lord at the holy city of Jerusalem to house the Ark of the Covenant,
but God’s plan was for David’s son Solomon to be the builder. So David gathered supplies
and laid down plans for the Temple to be built by his son King Solomon on Mount Moriah.

Mount Moriah was the site where the patriarch Abraham showed his willingness to
sacrifice his son Isaac to the Lord (Genesis 22:1-19) and where the ancient priestly king
Melchizedek had once presided in sacrifice to the Lord (Genesis 14:18). The Temple
would become the center of the nation. It would be destroyed in war and rebuilt before
finally being demolished by the Romans in 70 AD. Today Jews continue to pray at the
Wailing Wall, which remains from the Temple’s last form.

Throughout salvation history, God formed familial agreements, called covenants, with the
patriarchs to expand his people in his plan of redemption. The covenant God made with
David provided a bridge from past patriarchs both to Jesus and to the future of the Chosen
People. For example, whereas the covenant with Moses only regarded the Hebrew nation,
the covenant with David involved a kingdom with an eye beyond Israel, and Jesus
established his Church for all peoples. While Moses laid down ritual and morality as
needed in his time, David emphasized more of an internalization of those rituals and laws,
and Jesus radicalized the internalization of the law. Whereas the Ten Commandments
served as a sign of the covenant with Moses, the Temple signified the covenant with David.
Jesus said, referring to himself as the new Temple, “Destroy this temple and in three days I
will raise it up” (John 2:19).

While seeing Christ as the fulfillment of all the patriarchs and covenants, the New
Testament particularly stresses Jesus as bringing about the fulfillment of the Davidic
covenant. The Gospels refer to Jesus a number of times as the ‘Son of David’ and portray
him often as acting with reference to David. In fact, the Gospel of Matthew begins with
these words: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of
Abraham” (Matthew 1:1). Even the very title of Christ, meaning ‘Anointed One,’ refers to
the ultimate anointing promised to David’s royal lineage.

David is considered the father of the Psalms, the Bible’s collection of songs and poems to
God, which have become a prime source of both Jewish and Christian prayers throughout
the ages. For Christians, their ultimate meaning is found in Christ, and the inspired words
are also guides for the prayers of every believer. Seventy-three of the one hundred fifty
Psalms in the Bible are attributed to David. It might seem strange that a man of war would
also be a musician and poet, but then again war is the context for many of the Psalms and
was a prime subject of ancient music and poetry. It may have been an outlet for David, who
the Bible tells us was skilled on the harp from his youth.

David saw music not merely as a pastime but also as worship. Thus the Bible tells us that
when the young David would play his music before King Saul, the demon that tormented
the king would depart. Furthermore, when David was king, he appointed Levites to make
music for the Lord day and night; this was to be their specific priestly duty. Many of the
Psalms are attributed to whole families of Levites, such as the sons of Korah, whose
priestly duty from generation to generation was to offer worship to God in the Temple in
the form of music, both sung and on instruments. There is only scarce mention of music for
worship in the liturgical life of Israel prior to David. Music as worship and the Psalms as
a genre of song and poetry are part of the legacy left by David.

In this book, we’ll look at the Biblical story of David in light of the covenants God made
with the people and see salvation history as a united whole. We’ll look at Israel’s desire
for a king, David’s attitude towards Saul’s authority, and the vicissitudes of David’s
kingdom in the context of blessing, sin, and God’s correction. Then we will look at the
Psalms and consider their history, content, context, form, and their significance for the life
of prayer.
Israel’s Desire for a King
God had promised Moses that the children of Israel would possess the Promised Land, the
land of Canaan. He placed under judgment the numerous nations that inhabited the land
because of their wickedness, including human sacrifice to demonic idols. Moses delivered
this oracle from the Lord: “He will remove these nations before you little by little. You
cannot finish with them quickly, lest the wild beasts become too numerous for you.…He
will deliver their kings into your power, that you may make their names perish from under
the heavens. No one will be able to stand up against you, till you have destroyed them”
(Deuteronomy 7:22, 24). They entered the Promised Land and took possession of it, but at
the time of Samuel, Israel was still very much under threat from the fearsome foes that
surrounded them. Around seven hundred years likely passed from the time of Moses to the
time of Samuel. During that time, the twelve tribes continued in a confederation joined only
by blood, faith, and the Law of Moses. They relied on God for their national governance
rather than on a human system.

The Book of Judges in the Bible tells the story of twelve judges, one from each of the
twelve tribes, God raised up to provide temporary leadership and direction in various
times of military and social crisis. Scholars note in the Book of Judges a certain repetitive
cycle: first sinfulness, then a crisis that comes as punishment, then a petition for help from
the people, and lastly God’s response in sending a judge. The judges were thus ‘deliverers’
sent by God, and they had the power to lead the military and to provide justice for the
people. Needless to say, this way of national governance, part of God’s gradual plan of
forming his people, required trust and patience. The people grew weary of it, desiring
greater security under a centralized and stable government. Thus, in the later days of
Samuel, a prophetic leader—presented in the First Book of Samuel as a judge—sought to
establish his sons as his successors.

The nations around the Israelites had kings who made their power felt. There were kings of
the dreaded Amalekites to the south, the warlike Philistines to the southwest, the Edomites
south of the Dead Sea, and the Ammonites to the northeast. These nations also had their
many gods and would worship before them, crafting idols to see with their own eyes.
Yahweh, the God of Israel, however, was invisible and claimed to be the only true God. He
demanded exclusive allegiance and punished infidelity.

According to G. K. Chesterton in his book The Everlasting Man, polytheism offers two
types of deities: fanciful gods made up by people who see divine effects in the universe but
can’t quite put their finger on them, and real demonic spirits that demand human sacrifice
and evil deeds in exchange for acts of supernatural power that provide some temporal
successes but lead to ultimate and eternal destruction. The inhabitants of Canaan likely
went after the latter. The Bible references many times the immolation of children to deities
such as Molech and Baal. It also shows numerous incidents in which strange gods are able
to demonstrate some power, though nothing in comparison with Yahweh and limited by
him. For example, when Moses went before Pharaoh, the magicians of Egypt were able to
turn their staffs into serpents to demonstrate their power. But when Moses’ brother Aaron
cast down his own staff, the Lord turned it into a serpent that was more powerful than the
others and swallowed them whole (Exodus 7:8-13).

Fighting satanic belligerents on all sides, the Israelites had much to fear, and they lacked
the faith to wait completely on the Lord for deliverance. So they asked Samuel for a king to
lead them in battle: “Now that you are old and your sons do not follow your example,
appoint a king over us, like all the nations, to rule over us” (1 Samuel 8:5).

Samuel took offense at this, but God said to him, “You are not the one they are rejecting.
They are rejecting me as their king” (1 Samuel 8:7). According to the Navarre Bible
commentary, “the real danger is that the people, by choosing a king and swearing
allegiance to him, will be excluding God from the picture … [T]he main danger posed by
having a monarchy will be a tendency to solve military, political and social problems
without reference to God or even in contravention of his Law” (Joshua-Kings, 236-237).

So Samuel returned to the people and warned them of what having a king would mean: “He
will take your sons and assign them to his chariots and horses, and they will run before his
chariot.… He will use your daughters as perfumers, cooks, and bakers. He will take your
best fields, vineyards, and olive groves, and give them to his servants. He will tithe your
crops and grape harvests to give to his officials and his servants.…As for you, you will
become his slaves. On that day you will cry out because of the king whom you have chosen,
but the LORD will not answer you on that day” (1 Samuel 8:11-18). But the people were
willing to risk forfeiting their civil liberties in exchange for a strong and visible human
leader to wage their wars.

So God gave them their request, and because of God’s covenantal love for his people, he
worked it into good. As St. Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans, “We know that all
things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose”
(Romans 8:28). The kingdom, while becoming a source of great sorrow for the people,
also became their greatest hope in the ‘Kingdom of God.’ Thus Jesus, when he first came
about preaching in Galilee, proclaimed, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of
God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).

So the Spirit of the Lord came upon Saul, son of Kish, from the tribe of Benjamin, and
Samuel anointed him king of Israel. Originally Saul was in tune with God’s Spirit. There
was even a saying: “Is Saul also among the prophets?” (1 Samuel 10:11). At the time of his
selection as king, he was described as humble, and his initial anointing as king affected him
profoundly (1 Samuel 10:9). But as Saul settled into his power and became complacent, he
began to grow indifferent to God’s laws.
God’s Rejection of Saul as King
It seems that the Lord was most displeased over Saul’s loss of fervor for following the
Lord’s commands. Saul’s lukewarm faith and callousness over his sins prompted the Lord
to withdraw his Spirit from him. Without God’s Spirit, Saul fell from lukewarm to
wickedness, and his kingdom fell from victory in the Lord to defeat at the hands of the
Philistines.

The First Book of Samuel shows us a series of lesser sins that led to a spiritual precipice
for Saul. Thinking the armies of Israel would only succeed in battle if they offered a token
sacrifice to the Lord, Saul presumed to offer a sacrifice himself in advance of the
approaching Philistines, even though God had commanded him to wait for Samuel, who
was delayed. Upon arriving during the sacrifice, the prophet Samuel foretold the demise of
Saul’s dynasty and that the Lord would seek another king “after his own heart” (1 Samuel
13:14).

The next sign of Saul’s rejection was a vain and foolish oath in God’s name he imposed on
all the men of his camp that anyone who ate before the king defeated his enemies should
die. In addition to placing the men under an unwarranted threat, this also made them weak
for the battle. Oblivious to the oath, Saul’s son Jonathan, the crown prince, picked up some
honey to eat. Upon learning of this, Saul condemned his own son to death, but the prince
was rescued by the soldiers.

The final blow for Saul came in disregarding God’s command to annihilate the wicked
Amalekites. His disobedience of this command, given both in the Law of Moses
(Deuteronomy 7) and directly to him by the prophet Samuel (1 Samuel 15), stemmed not
from any sense of pity but from greed.

God had placed the inhabitants of Canaan under judgment, as he had done to the peoples of
Sodom and Gomorrah, which he completely destroyed by fire and brimstone for their
wanton crimes (Genesis 19). In the Bible, peoples are often seen in the person of their
ancestor. Amalek was the father of the Amalekites. He was the illegitimate grandson of
Esau, Isaac’s son who had relinquished his blessing and birthright to his brother Jacob
(also known as Israel) for a bowl of porridge. While the children of Israel were still
wandering in the desert, the nomadic Amalekites caught sight of them and struck them
without provocation. Thus, as the giver of life and its just taker, God ordered the Israelites
to destroy certain nations of Canaan completely, along with everything they possessed, and
to take no booty whatsoever. This order was called the ‘ban.’

Saul understood this well and had no trouble with slaughtering Amalekites in general, but
he kept the most useful of what he conquered for himself, including King Agag and the best
of the sheep and oxen. When Samuel found him out, Saul pretended that he had saved the
best of the sheep and oxen to sacrifice to the Lord. This prompted Samuel to pronounce a
saying later referenced by Jesus: “Obedience is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22).
Saul refused to repent and tried to hide his sin. Samuel then declared God’s justice to Saul:

Because you have rejected the word of the LORD,

the LORD in turn has rejected you as king.
(1 Samuel 15:23)

Samuel had finally gotten Saul’s attention; only with that did Saul finally admit his sin, but
without any sincere change of heart. The king blamed his sin on the will of the people and
urged Samuel to forgive him, forget the matter, and make a public appearance with him at
the sacrifice. Samuel refused, and when he turned to leave, Saul grabbed him, tearing off a
piece of his garment. In this, Saul unwittingly made his own demonstrative prophecy.
Samuel explained, “The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day, and has
given it to a neighbor of yours, who is better than you” (1 Samuel 15:28).

Saul knew that Samuel was a true prophet of the Lord, since through his words he had been
raised to the throne and had won many unlikely battles. Still, even with the knowledge that
the Lord had rejected him as king, Saul’s primary concern was to give a spectacle of
kingship and piety before the people. Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned, yet honor me
now before the elders of my people and before Israel. Return with me that I may worship
the LORD your God” (1 Samuel 15:30). Saul implicitly admitted that he had rejected God
and that God had rejected him. To him, Yahweh was only “the Lord your God,” while his
guests were “the elders of my people.” Samuel conceded to Saul’s request for his
presence, but this would be the last time. We read, “Never again, as long as he lived, did
Samuel see Saul. Yet he grieved over Saul, because the LORD repented that he had made
him king of Israel” (1 Samuel 15:35).

According to the Navarre Bible commentary, “Saul resembles the Christian who, through
lukewarmness, never really goes fully along with the will of God; his sins do not seem to
be very serious, but they lead to a gradual breakdown in his relationship with God”
(Joshua-Kings, 249). Deprived of God’s Spirit, Saul was tormented by a demon for the rest
of his life, his psychological state became erratic, and he performed greater acts of
wickedness as time went on. Given Saul’s experience with having lost God’s Spirit, it is
no wonder the future King David pleaded with God not to “take from me your holy spirit”
in his own time of repentance from serious sin (Psalm 51:13).

Saul’s reign may have lasted for forty years, but some years before it ended, God began
moving from the monarchy under Saul to the reign of David. God directed Samuel to go and
anoint David secretly as the next king. Though not yet ruling over Israel, David would need
this special outpouring of God’s Spirit to move him into a position where he could rise to
the throne with clean hands and make Israel into a great kingdom.
God’s Choice of David
Samuel said God would seek “a man after his own heart.” David was much suppler to
God’s will and more enthusiastic about following it than Saul, even though he did not
always make the best decisions. The phrase could also be taken to mean “of his choosing,
for his purpose” (NABRE notes for 1 Samuel 13:14). God had a plan for Israel through
David. Jesus would be the only king able to please God completely.

There was no reason to think that the youngest son of Jesse the Bethlehemite would become
a king. At least Saul was the son of a powerful man named Kish and was a grown man of
towering physical stature at the time of his anointing. One day David would do mighty
deeds, but at the time of his selection, he was just a shepherd boy. Although a strong,
handsome, and talented youth, he lacked important lineage and had not yet been recognized
for any significant accomplishments. Nor did Samuel pick him because of his potential.
Mysteriously, the Lord led Samuel to Bethlehem in the tribe of Judah and pointed David out
to be anointed as king (Navarre Bible, Joshua-Kings, 265).

Bethlehem means ‘house of bread.’ The Arabic name for the city today, now in West Bank
territory, means ‘house of flesh.’ The most ancient name for the city is Ephrath, which
means ‘fertile.’ Located in Judah’s hill country, the city was known for its farming and
pastures for sheep. Shepherding was a common job. A thousand years after David,
shepherding was still flourishing on the plains of Bethlehem. One might recall the
shepherds greeted by angels in the Christmas story at the birth of another unlikely king—
Jesus.

Samuel invited Jesse and his sons to sacrifice with him to the Lord, but Jesse did not even
think to call David. Samuel met each of the seven sons Jesse presented. Among them were
tall and strong warriors in their prime, but God rejected them all. Referring to David’s
older brother Eliab, God said to Samuel, “Do not judge from his appearance or from his
lofty stature, because I have rejected him. God does not see as a mortal, who sees the
appearance. The LORD looks into the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). So he asked Jesse if he had
any other sons, and Jesse told him about the youngest, who was tending the sheep in the
fields. Samuel insisted that Jesse send for him.

When David came back from the fields, the Lord pointed him out to Samuel as the one he
had chosen. What took place next was not merely of political import. We read, “Then
Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand, anointed him in the midst of his brothers, and from that
day on, the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David” (1 Samuel 16:13). With the anointing
came a singular outpouring of God’s Spirit that would last with David forever and help
assist him with his mission for the people. David understood and felt the significance of the
anointing, which would rest forever with the one anointed. For this reason, in his later
struggles with King Saul, David, more than anyone else, understood that one must never
harm the ‘Lord’s anointed’ regardless of his actions.

David’s anointing foreshadowed Jesus’ anointing, when the Spirit descended and rested
upon him in the form of a dove after his baptism by the prophet John the Baptist (Mark 1:9-
11). According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, God’s Spirit sets an indelible seal
on the soul through the anointing in the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy
Orders, which cannot be removed (no. 698).

Psalm 23, attributed to David, seems to draw on his early shepherding experience and the
significance of his anointing and, more generally, of God’s endless love:

The LORD is my shepherd;

there is nothing I lack.
In green pastures he makes me lie down;
to still waters he leads me;
he restores my soul.
He guides me along right paths
for the sake of his name.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
your rod and your staff comfort me.
You set a table before me
in front of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Indeed, goodness and mercy will pursue me
all the days of my life;
I will dwell in the house of the LORD
for endless days. (Psalm 23:1-6)

In the next chapters of First Samuel, we see the signs of God’s Spirit resting upon David.
While Saul would always be ‘anointed,’ the effects of God’s Spirit waned from his life. A
series of stories from various sources are placed here to underscore this. As Saul’s
spiritual and psychological state declined, his servants brought in David to play the harp
for the king, and the evil spirit tormenting Saul would disappear as David played. Then,
filled by God’s Spirit, David was moved to confront the Philistine champion Goliath, who
defied the armies of God. Armed only with a sling, five stones, and a prayer, David took up
Goliath’s challenge and felled the giant in one blow with his slingshot. Then Saul made
David his armor bearer. He also sent David on many campaigns against the Philistines, in
which he was always successful. Finally, even Saul’s own son and daughter were taken
with David: Jonathan made a covenant with David, and Michal fell in love with him. The
writer subtly presents hints of David’s succession to Saul and his family’s approval of him.
But soon Saul grew jealous of David, as the women sang,

“Saul has slain his thousands,

David his tens of thousands.” (1 Samuel 18:7)

From then on, Saul felt threatened by David and began to plot his demise.
Transition and Danger
From the time of his anointing, the Spirit of the Lord came strongly upon David. That is
why David, as a young adolescent shepherd not trained for war, was moved to confront the
giant Goliath of Gath, the hero of the Philistines, whom he was enabled to defeat. The First
Book of Samuel tells us that Goliath’s height was “six cubits and a span,” which is
equivalent to nine feet nine inches (1 Samuel 17:4), though the Greek Septuagint indicates a
figure that translates to six feet nine inches (NABRE footnotes). Standing between the
camps of the Israelites and the Philistines in the valley of Elah and taunting the cowering
Israelites for forty days, Goliath challenged them to send him one Israelite champion with
whom to fight and determine the outcome of the battle. He did not merely challenge the
Israelites in human terms, but cursed the armies of the Lord by his demonic deities.

After telling Saul about how he had killed a lion and a bear to protect his sheep, David
received the king’s permission to enter into combat with the Philistine champion that turned
out to be first and foremost spiritual. Goliath, armed to the teeth in the grandest of
weaponry, rushed to meet David, who was carrying only a slingshot with five stones since
he had refused the armor and weapons that Saul offered him. David answered Goliath’s
taunts, “You come against me with sword and spear and scimitar, but I come against you in
the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have insulted.
Today the LORD shall deliver you into my hand; I will strike you down and cut off your
head. This very day I will feed your dead body and the dead bodies of the Philistine army
to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field; thus the whole land shall learn that Israel
has a God. All this multitude, too, shall learn that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD
saves. For the battle belongs to the LORD, who shall deliver you into our hands” (1
Samuel 17:45-47). That is, of course, exactly what came to pass in David’s confrontation
with Goliath. He taught even the Israelites a lesson that day in trusting God.

The Church Fathers also interpreted David’s confrontation in spiritual terms, and
furthermore saw connections to Christ. St. Caesarius of Arles writes, “David, that is,
Christ, strangled the lion and freed everyone from the jaws of death […]. Since the strength
of the bear is his paws, and the lion’s, his mouth, these fierce creatures prefigure the devil.
Moreover, all this is said of Christ who would have to free the one, true Church from the
clutches of evil, that is, from the power of the devil” (quoted in Navarre Bible commentary
p. 270).

David was warmly greeted with joy by all the king’s court and even developed a strong
friendship with Jonathan, the crown prince. Their friendship and strong loyalty to each
other was grounded in the Lord. Not only did Jonathan like David, but he seems to have
humbly perceived that David was chosen by the Lord to be the successor to the throne. He
seems to have accepted that his father was rejected by the Lord and may have taken
David’s nearly impossible victory over Goliath as a sign of David’s election by God. For
this reason, he made a covenant with David, binding himself and his line to that of David.
The Book of First Samuel records covenants between Jonathan and David on several
occasions. In this first account, Jonathan took off his military vesture, sword, bow, and belt
and gave them to David. This action symbolized Jonathan’s recognition of David’s
succession as king. Elsewhere in First Samuel, we see that David and Jonathan agreed that
in David’s kingdom, Jonathan would be second only to the king and David and his line
would show kindness to Jonathan’s line and would not wipe them out as would be typical
with the rise of a new dynasty. Jonathan, however, also realized that in the grand scheme of
things, David’s succession as king might come after his own death.

In fact, one day David, as king, would honor his covenant promises to Jonathan through his
son Meribbaal, in some texts called Mephibosheth, through whom the bloodline of Saul
and Jonathan would continue. David admitted Meribbaal, who was lame in both feet,
forever to eat at the royal table and also gave him everything that had belonged to the house
of Saul (2 Samuel 9). The future King David also spared Meribbaal, and thus his line,
when he had to hand over Saul’s male descendants to the Gibeonites as a national
atonement for a massacre Saul had committed against them, for which God was punishing
Israel with a three-year drought (2 Samuel 21).

At times, Saul accepted David’s future succession as king, but at other times, he fiercely
rejected it. Most of the time the latter was the case. Saul’s first act of aggression towards
David was throwing a spear in his direction while David played for him on his harp. Saul
missed the first time, so he tried a second. Failing once more, he sent David out to war,
probably hoping he would die in battle. Not only did David survive, but he also won great
victories and became all the more popular with the army and the people. Next Saul sought
to get at David through his daughter Merob, whom he had proposed to offer David in
marriage in exchange for fighting more wars. But again David survived, and Saul
nonetheless gave Merob to another man in marriage.

Then Saul’s younger daughter Michal took an interest in David. Saul perceived this and
offered to give her hand in marriage to David, thinking to take advantage of the situation.
But David could not afford a present worthy of the hand of a king’s daughter. So Saul set
this price: the foreskins of one hundred dead Philistines, hoping again that David would die
in battle. But David returned with not one hundred but two hundred Philistine foreskins. So
David married Michal.

Next, Jonathan heard of his father’s plans to kill David and informed his friend. At this
point, we find another account of Saul attempting to spear David while he played the harp.
Then Saul devised yet another plot—to kill David in his bed. Michal heard of it and
informed David. David fled, and his wife placed a life-sized idol with a head of goat’s
hair next to her in the bed to fool the soldiers. When the soldiers came in the night to
slaughter David, they found only the idol next to the princess. David knew he was now an
outlaw to Saul and that he could no longer dwell openly in Israelite territory.
David in Flight
David was in a precarious situation. He had been secretly anointed king of Israel by the
prophet Samuel while Saul was still on the throne and in power. Samuel had pronounced
God’s judgment on Saul’s kingdom, also in private, but had not indicated to Saul which
man God had chosen as the next king. Saul, however, had seen the effects of God’s Spirit in
David’s mighty acts and suspected him. In Saul’s mind, the only way to preserve his own
dynasty was to kill David and not merely arrest or exile him (1 Samuel 20:31).

After Saul had ordered his men to kill David, David fled north to Ramah, the hometown of
Samuel. Saul heard of it and sent his men after him. When they arrived, they found Samuel
at the head of a band of prophets in an ecstatic trance. Saul’s men also fell into this trance.
So Saul himself came to Ramah, but he too fell into the trance. We are told that in this
trance he stripped himself naked before Samuel, perhaps being only lightly clad. The result
was David’s escape. As Jesus said in John’s Gospel, “the light came into the world, but
people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil” (John 3:19). Similarly,
because he chose the darkness, Saul’s encounters with God were now negative and not
positive.

The editor of First Samuel then inserted a story from what is likely another textual tradition
(Layman’s Bible Commentary vol. 6, p. 109). From Ramah, David went to Jonathan,
perhaps back near Saul’s capital of Hebron, and asked him what wrong he had done in
Saul’s eyes to deserve death (1 Samuel 20). Jonathan could not believe that his father
really sought to destroy David, so David asked Jonathan to find out and give him a sign of
his father’s intentions. Jonathan agreed, and it is in this context that we come upon the first
account of the covenant between Jonathan and David.

As the crown prince, Jonathan was the party of higher rank and thus the covenant initiator.
He acknowledged the kingdom transfer after his father’s reign to David. He offered David
his protection while David was always to preserve Jonathan’s line, which he did. Jonathan
stated the covenant in this way: “Should it please my father to bring any harm upon you,
may the LORD do thus to Jonathan and more, if I do not inform you of it and send you on
your way in peace. May the LORD be with you even as he was with my father. Only this: if
I am still alive, may you show me the kindness of the LORD. But if I die, never cut off your
kindness from my house. And when the LORD cuts off all the enemies of David from the
face of the land, the name of Jonathan must never be cut off from the family of David, or the
LORD will make you answer for it” (1 Samuel 20:13-16).

According to this narrative account, David was still expected in the king’s presence along
with the rest of the court to celebrate the New Moon, a religious observance that continued
for several days to celebrate the beginning of a new Hebrew month. David asked Jonathan
to observe his father’s reaction to his absence and to communicate it to him on the third day
with a sign during his routine archery practice.

Saul made little of David’s absence on the first day, assuming that David, as was common
for Israelites, had become ritually unclean and thus unfit to celebrate the religious
observance. But on the second day, the king demanded an explanation from Jonathan.
Jonathan replied that David had gone to Bethlehem for an annual sacrifice important to his
family. Enraged at his son’s attempt to protect David, Saul flew into a fury, openly admitted
his intent to kill David, and hurled not only insults at the crown prince but also a spear in
his direction. Jonathan had been disgraced by his father and thus refused to participate in
any feasting.

On the third day, Jonathan shot his arrows beyond the stone heap that he had indicated to
David as the marker of his father’s intent. While it was known that Jonathan had a
friendship with David, it was not known that Jonathan was actively thwarting his father’s
plans with regard to David—not even Jonathan’s servant boy who accompanied him in
archery knew this. Only the two men understood the meaning of the far-shot arrows. But
after the sign was given, David emerged from his hiding place to bid Jonathan goodbye
before his ultimate flight from Saul.

In his flight, David passed through Nob, a priestly city in the territory of the Benjamin
tribe. By this time, David had gathered a band of men, but they did not enter the city with
him. Just after this episode we are told, “He was joined by all those in difficulties or in
debt, or embittered, and became their leader” (1 Samuel 22:2). At Nob, David went to the
priest Ahimelech, though he did not tell the priest that he was fleeing from Saul but that he
was on a mission. He asked Ahimelech for bread, but the priest only had the show bread,
also called the bread of the Presence. The twelve loaves were a continuous offering to
God, prescribed by the Law of Moses; they were replaced every Sabbath by the priests and
could only be eaten by priests. Perceiving God’s presence with David, who had been
anointed as king of Israel by Samuel, Ahimelech gave the show bread to David since kings
also functioned as priests. He also asked if David and his men had kept themselves ritually
clean. They had, in accord with the prescriptions of holy war (Navarre Bible commentary,
284-285). Ahimelech also offered him the sword of Goliath for the battles ahead. On an
interesting note, when Jesus’ disciples were later accused of working on the Sabbath to
pick grain to eat, Jesus cited Ahimelech’s offering of the show bread to David in his time
of need, showing how his own disciples, as the retinue of the Son of David, were to be
accorded similar privileges (Matthew 12:4; Pope Benedict in Jesus of Nazareth: From the
Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, p. 108).

King Saul heard that David had passed through Nob, so he left for the city in a desperate
frenzy. He ordered the men of the city to offer information on who had harbored David. No
one spoke, with the exception of one foreigner, Doeg the Edomite, who was in charge of
the king’s herdsmen and thus had a personal interest in pleasing the king. With Doeg having
betrayed him to Saul, Ahimelech insisted that his help for David was without any intention
of disloyalty to the king. But Saul would hear none of it and further implicated all the
priests of the Lord in Nob in a conspiracy against him. So he ordered his men to slay them
all. Out of holy fear, they refused, so Saul had the foreigner Doeg execute the priests of
God by the sword. After this, Saul ordered a general massacre of the city.

There was only one survivor—Abiathar, son of Ahimelech of Eli’s priestly line—and he
fled to David, who put him under his protection. Abiathar also brought the ephod, which
was used for consulting the Lord. Elsewhere the term ‘ephod’ is used to refer to a
sleeveless linen liturgical garment worn by priests. It’s not known for sure if this is the
same ‘ephod,’ but if so, it may have further incorporated some means of casting lots.
Abiathar would become high priest under the future King David, together with Zadok, and
would play key roles in various crises in David’s future kingdom. But Saul, at that point,
was without priests and without the ephod to consult the Lord. Meanwhile David had both.
“I Will Not Harm the Lord’s Anointed”
David was consolidating his power on Israel’s fringes and preparing for his future reign,
all the while insisting on avoiding any military confrontation with Saul or harm to his
person. To David, Saul was the Lord’s anointed, and no one who harmed his anointed
could be blameless regardless of the king’s guilt. Saul would fall through God’s
providence in judgment for his sins, not through David’s political ambitions.

In connection with the narrative of David at the priestly city of Nob, the editor of First
Samuel inserted a story of David’s flight to Philistine territory. Perhaps David thought he
could take advantage of Achish, king of the Philistine city of Gath, for protection against
Saul, but the Philistines knew his record against them in the Israelite wars and reported it
to Achish. Finding himself in unsympathetic Philistine hands, David feigned madness so
they would perceive him as harmless. So Achish soon sent him away. Psalm 34 is
attributed to David at this time:

I sought the LORD, and he answered me,

delivered me from all my fears.
Look to him and be radiant,
and your faces may not blush for shame.
This poor one cried out and the LORD heard,
and from all his distress he saved him.
The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he saves them.
Taste and see that the LORD is good;
blessed is the stalwart one who takes refuge in him.
Fear the LORD, you his holy ones;
nothing is lacking to those who fear him.
The rich grow poor and go hungry,
but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing. (Psalm 34:5-11)

David then went out into the wilderness, and his band grew to around four hundred men
since disenfranchised Israelites continued to seek him out. Even his own brothers, who at
first did not seem to make much of him, joined David in flight and fight, as did his parents.
But after this, David went to the king of Moab at Mizpah and left his parents under his
protection before moving on to the perils that lay ahead (1 Samuel 22:3).

After this, David and his men hid in the wilderness of Judah. There he consulted the Lord
by way of the ephod and determined to liberate the Israelite city of Keilah, near the edge of
Philistine territory, which was being overrun by the Philistines. His men were at first
hesitant, but he rallied them to their first victory under his command. But Saul heard of it
and planned to besiege the walled city and trap David inside. Again David consulted the
Lord by way of the ephod. The Lord warned him that the men of Keilah would deliver him
over to Saul in the event of a siege. So David and his men left the city. Next we find David
again in the wilderness of Ziph in Judah on the western bank of the Dead Sea. There he
took refuge in desert strongholds. Psalm 57 is attributed to David while he was hiding in a
cave from King Saul:

Have mercy on me, God,

have mercy on me.
In you I seek refuge.
In the shadow of your wings I seek refuge
till harm pass by.
I call to God Most High,
to God who provides for me.
May God send help from heaven to save me,
shame those who trample upon me.
May God send fidelity and mercy.

I must lie down in the midst of lions

hungry for human prey.
Their teeth are spears and arrows;
their tongue, a sharpened sword.
Be exalted over the heavens, God;
may your glory appear above all the earth.

They have set a trap for my feet;

my soul is bowed down;
They have dug a pit before me.
May they fall into it themselves!

My heart is steadfast, God,

my heart is steadfast.
I will sing and chant praise.
Awake, my soul;
awake, lyre and harp!
I will wake the dawn.
I will praise you among the peoples, Lord;
I will chant your praise among the nations.
For your mercy towers to the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
Exalt yourself over the heavens, God;
 may your glory appear above all the earth. (Psalm 57:2-12)

Somehow Jonathan found David there and “encouraged him in the LORD” (1 Samuel
23:16). Here we have the second account of a covenant between Jonathan and David.
Jonathan said to him, “You shall be king of Israel and I shall be second to you. Even my
father Saul knows this” (1 Samuel 23:17).

But Saul was not ready to accept it. The Ziphites reported David’s location to Saul, who
came to pursue him with their assistance. Saul, in fact, found David there. So close was he
on David’s trail that Saul’s men, on one side of the ridge, were trying to overcome David’s
men just on the other side. Just then word came to Saul about a Philistine attack, and he
pulled back to engage the foreign threat in battle. But it was not long before Saul returned
to pursue David, this time with an army of three thousand of “the best men from all Israel”
(1 Samuel 24:3). It was David who first sighted Saul. Saul happened to rest in the same
cave in which David was hiding at Engedi, in the desert near the Dead Sea. Saul was now
thoroughly in David’s power, but David only cut off the edge of his robe, refusing to harm
the Lord’s anointed despite his men’s insistence on smiting his enemy. Instead David chose
to step outside the cave to engage Saul in a nonviolent confrontation. He cried out to the
out-foxed king,

My lord the king! … Why do you listen to those who say, “David is trying to harm
you”? You see for yourself today that the LORD just now delivered you into my hand
in the cave. I was told to kill you, but I took pity on you instead. I decided, “I will not
raise a hand against my master, for he is the LORD’s anointed.” Look here, my father.
See the end of your robe which I hold. I cut off an end of your robe and did not kill
you. Now see and be convinced that I plan no harm and no rebellion. I have done you
no wrong, though you are hunting me down to take my life. May the LORD judge
between me and you. May the LORD exact justice from you in my case. I shall not
lay a hand on you. As the old proverb says, “From the wicked comes wickedness.”
Thus I will not lay a hand on you. What is the king of Israel attacking? What are you
pursuing? A dead dog! A single flea! The LORD will be the judge to decide between
us. May the LORD see this, defend my cause, and give me justice against you! (1
Samuel 24:9-16)

King Saul was seemingly moved by David’s conduct, at least for the moment, and even
acknowledged his future kingship. He replied to David,

Is that your voice, my son David? … You are more in the right than I am. You have
treated me graciously, while I have treated you badly. You have declared this day
how you treated me graciously: the LORD delivered me into your hand and you did
 not kill me. For if someone comes upon an enemy, do they send them graciously on
their way? So may the LORD reward you graciously for what you have done this day.
And now, since I know that you will certainly become king and that the kingship over
Israel shall come into your possession, swear to me by the LORD that you will not
cut off my descendants and that you will not blot out my name from my father’s
house. (1 Samuel 24:17-22)

David agreed. Preserving the line of Jonathan was already part of the covenant he had
entered with Saul’s eldest son. For the moment, the confrontation between David and Saul
had reached a hiatus. But it would not last long.
Providence Sets the Stage
We are presented soon afterward with another account of Saul’s aggression in hunting
down David and David’s mercy toward the Lord’s anointed. This time David and his men
came upon Saul and his army sleeping and unguarded in the wilderness of Ziph. Abishai, a
nephew of David who would serve him many years as a chief military officer, was with
David in this episode. He would always be very zealous for David and aggressive towards
anyone who threatened his lord. Here Abishai advised David to kill Saul, but David
refused, only taking the king’s spear and water jug as evidence of his goodwill toward him
even though he had him in his grasp. Then David emerged from an opposite hill and
shouted out, chiding Saul’s general Abner at his failure to protect Saul from the dangerous
fugitive he sought. Again Saul recognized David’s voice and admitted his wrong in seeking
his life. But the king was not sincere.

In fact, after this, David despaired of his ability to evade Saul’s wrath while in Israelite
territory to the point that he again defected to the Philistines for cover. He reasoned in this
manner: “I shall perish some day at the hand of Saul. I have no choice but to escape to the
land of the Philistines; then Saul will give up his continual search for me throughout the
land of Israel, and I will be out of his reach” (1 Samuel 27:1).

But first, David, deprived of his wife Michal by Saul who had given her in marriage to
another man, found himself another wife under the most unlikely circumstances. Around
nearby Carmel, David and his guerrilla band camped together with the flock and shepherds
of a rich man named Nabal. The guerrilla bands that frequented the land usually had little
courtesy for others’ property, which they would exploit for their needs. David’s men acted
honorably and protected the flock, so he sent messengers to greet Nabal and politely
request some provisions. Nabal, whose name means ‘fool’ and who was described as a
rude and arrogant man, insulted David’s men and refused them sharply. Tempted to restore
his honor by overrunning Nabal’s household, David was halted by Nabal’s wife, Abigail,
who sought to assuage the situation, realizing that her husband’s rudeness could easily
provoke disaster. She had her servants bring provisions out to David’s men without her
husband’s knowledge, acknowledged David as the future king of Israel, and offered him
encouragement. Abigail returned home to a drunk Nabal, and she only told him later about
the crisis she had averted. At this, we are told that God struck down Nabal, who fell to the
floor. He would not recover, dying several days later. After Nabal’s death, David proposed
marriage to Abigail, who promptly accepted and followed him with her companions. In
accord with the custom of the times, David also took a second wife—Ahinoam of Jezreel
—through whom his son Absalom and daughter Tamar would be born. Now the future royal
family was emerging.

Soon this family found itself in Philistine territory, with David having gone to Achish, king
of Gath, for protection from Saul. Achish made David a vassal lord, giving him the city of
Ziklag as his domain. David, with his band of now six hundred men, would go out on raids
for Achish. But actually David was only manipulating the Philistine king; his men were
really attacking not the enemies of the Philistines but the enemies of Israel, clearing out the
path for his future kingdom and sharpening his men’s military skills. But word of David’s
true actions never got back to Achish because David took no prisoners in his raids.

After some time, Achish finally summoned David and his men to join him in a great battle
against Saul and the Kingdom of Israel. David had no choice but to agree to go, even
though he knew that he would not really fight his own kin or King Saul in combat.
Fortunately for David and his outlawed Israelite band, some of the Philistine officers
didn’t trust them to accompany the Philistine armies into battle. Achish still trusted David
at this point but released him and his men from participating in the battle because of his
officers’ concerns. Their release was providential, as this was to be the fateful battle that
would spell the doom of Saul and his sons. David and his band would have another
important battle on their hands against their own enemies.

Returning to Ziklag, their base city, David and his men found the city burned to the ground
and all their women, children, and valuable possessions carried off by the Amalekites.
David’s men were distraught. But unlike Saul, he had the ephod, so he consulted the Lord,
who told him to pursue the Amalekites. He overtook them and liberated all the women and
children, including his own wife Abigail, and brought back their possessions and even
extra booty the slain Amalekites had stolen from Philistine territory. He gave some of the
extra plunder to the men of Judah, securing their loyalty and displaying his abilities against
the enemies of Israel. Meanwhile Saul’s desperation ahead of the looming approach of the
Philistines was mounting.
The Fall of King Saul
At this time, the large army of the Philistines was closing in on Saul to the northeast, deep
into Israelite territory. Saul was desperate for a supernatural consultation as he was used to
in the days of the prophet Samuel, who by that time was deceased. But the ephod was with
David and no prophet came through with any words for him. So although he had banned
mediums and sorcerers from the land even at the pain of death, King Saul sought out
information from the ‘dark side’ of the spiritual world. Having been informed about a witch
at nearby Endor, he sought to have her conjure up the spirit of Samuel, in spite of God’s
warning in Leviticus, “Should anyone turn to ghosts and spirits and prostitute oneself with
them, I will turn against that person and cut such a one off from among the people”
(Leviticus 20:6). What follows is a fascinating dramatic encounter best conveyed by the
Scriptural text itself:

So he disguised himself, putting on other clothes, and set out with two companions.
They came to the woman at night, and Saul said to her, “Divine for me; conjure up the
spirit I tell you.” But the woman answered him, “You know what Saul has done, how
he expelled the mediums and diviners from the land. Then why are you trying to
entrap me and get me killed?” But Saul swore to her by the LORD, “As the LORD
lives, you shall incur no blame for this.” “Whom do you want me to conjure up?” the
woman asked him. “Conjure up Samuel for me,” he replied.

When the woman saw Samuel, she shrieked at the top of her voice and said to Saul,
“Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!” But the king said to her, “Do not be
afraid. What do you see?” “I see a god rising from the earth,” she replied. “What
does he look like?” asked Saul. “An old man is coming up wrapped in a robe,” she
replied. Saul knew that it was Samuel, and so he bowed his face to the ground in
homage.

Samuel then said to Saul, “Why do you disturb me by conjuring me up?” Saul
replied: “I am in great distress, for the Philistines are waging war against me and
God has turned away from me. Since God no longer answers me through prophets or
in dreams, I have called upon you to tell me what I should do.” To this Samuel said:
“But why do you ask me, if the LORD has abandoned you for your neighbor? The
LORD has done to you what he declared through me: he has torn the kingdom from
your hand and has given it to your neighbor David. Because you disobeyed the
LORD’s directive and would not carry out his fierce anger against Amalek, the
LORD has done this to you today. Moreover, the LORD will deliver Israel, and you
as well, into the hands of the Philistines. By tomorrow you and your sons will be
with me, and the LORD will have delivered the army of Israel into the hands of the
Philistines.” Immediately Saul fell full length on the ground, in great fear because of
 Samuel’s message. (1 Samuel 28:8-20)

While David slew the Amalekites after having recourse to God through the ephod, Saul,
lacking recourse to God, settled for a witch, only to be shown that God’s judgment for his
holding back on the Amalekites was about to be brought forth. Saul’s last meal was served
at the witch’s hands before he met his doom in battle on Mount Gilboa.

The battle went badly. Many Israelites were killed, and Saul and three of his sons were
surrounded. His sons—Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua—were slain first. Saul
himself was gravely wounded by an arrow, so he commanded his armor bearer to slay him
so he would not fall into the cruel hands of the enemy. The armor bearer refused to slay the
king, so Saul fell on his own sword, and the armor bearer followed his example. Saul
chose to die in this manner despite the prohibition in the Law of Moses against suicide.

With Saul and his sons dead and the army sorely defeated, the Philistines dominated the
land. The Israelites who lived in the area fled as the Philistines moved in to occupy and
even to dwell there and make those cities their own. Some scholars believe the Philistines
migrated from islands in the Aegean to southern Palestine, so they may not have been firmly
established but rather were seeking new territories to call their own.

The Philistines found the bodies of Saul and his sons and desecrated them, decapitating
Saul and impaling his body and those of his sons to the city wall at nearby Beth-shan. They
also placed Saul’s armor in one of their temples to praise their god. Israelite warriors from
Jabeth-gilead, across the Jordan to the east, came at night and recovered the bodies of Saul
and his sons to put them to rest, taking away the shame of being denied a proper burial (1
Samuel 31:11). They cremated the bodies. This was not a common Israelite practice, but
they may have seen it as the most fitting because the bodies were badly mutilated (NABRE
footnote). Then they buried the remains at their city and mourned and fasted for seven days
as was proper.

The First Book of Samuel ends at this point, and the narrative is then taken up by the
Second Book of Samuel. It begins with David’s reception of the news of the death of his
mortal enemy, King Saul. An Amalekite who lived in Israelite territory, perhaps fearing
David and seeking to take advantage of Saul’s death, came to him at far-off Ziklag with a
partially fabricated story about Saul’s death that he thought would gain him a reward from
David. He claimed to have come from Mount Gilboa and to have slain the wounded King
Saul at the king’s own command. At hearing this, David and his men tore their garments in
mourning over the death of Israel’s king, and then David said to the man, “How is it that
you were not afraid to put forth your hand to desecrate the LORD’s anointed?” (2 Samuel
1:14). And he had him executed for killing God’s anointed. It might also be remembered
that Amalekites were under the ban.

David then composed this song in honor of Saul and Jonathan and had it taught to the
inhabitants of Judah:

Alas! the glory of Israel,

slain upon your heights!
How can the warriors have fallen!
Do not report it in Gath,
as good news in Ashkelon’s streets,
Lest Philistine women rejoice,
lest the women of the uncircumcised exult!
O mountains of Gilboa,
upon you be neither dew nor rain,
nor surging from the deeps!
Defiled there the warriors’ shields,
the shield of Saul—no longer anointed with oil!
From the blood of the slain,
from the bodies of the warriors,
The bow of Jonathan did not turn back,
nor the sword of Saul return unstained.
Saul and Jonathan, beloved and dear,
separated neither in life nor death,
swifter than eagles,
stronger than lions!
Women of Israel, weep over Saul,
who clothed you in scarlet and in finery,
covered your clothing with ornaments of gold.
How can the warriors have fallen
in the thick of battle!
Jonathan—slain upon your heights!
I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother!
Most dear have you been to me;
More wondrous your love to me
than the love of women.
How can the warriors have fallen,
the weapons of war have perished! (2 Samuel 1:19-27)

Here again, in this beautiful song, David’s respect for Saul and his line was emphasized. It
was also recorded in the Book of Jahar, or Book of the Upright, which was a Hebrew book
of military poems and songs not in the Bible. The First and Second Books of Samuel have
an apologetic tone to them, as exemplified in the narrative above, apparently defending
David from the accusations of some Israelites who did not accept him or his sons as the
true rulers of Israel or Judah after Saul. Care is made in the text to highlight how David
respected Saul as the Lord’s anointed and had no part in bringing about his death.

Today some scholars of a deconstructionist bent approach David with mistrust and thus as
no different from any other ancient warrior seeking kingly power for himself. From that
perspective, they rewrite the history presented in the Bible to give us a very different
picture of David and present the books of Samuel as merely royal propaganda to subdue
the nation and silence the opposition. Postmodern scholars have deconstructed a great
many of the texts of Western Civilization, turning them inside out as history is rewritten in
our own image. Certainly the hermeneutic of faith cannot accept such a view of David or of
the books of Samuel.

In the books of Samuel, history itself seems to march David to the throne. Faith sees this as
providence: that God rejected Saul because of Saul’s rejection of him, that David did not
seek the kingship on his own because God chose David and anointed him through Samuel,
and that God paved the way for David’s throne without David instigating an ignoble coup
d’état against the rightful ruler. Still David was at times morally feeble despite his zeal for
God and ardent desire for holiness. We often find ourselves in a similar predicament.
Nonetheless David was a man of God’s choosing, often translated as “after his own heart.”
As St. Paul wrote in his Letter to the Romans, “For I do not do the good I want, but I do the
evil I do not want” (Romans 7:19).

The character of David is very human. He is an emotional figure, at times zealous for
executing hard justice, at other times overcome with a mercy that was hard for those around
him to understand. Tender with his family and loyal to his friends, he sometimes even
extended these feelings towards his adversaries. Though he sinned on numerous occasions
while overcome by passion, he was quick to heartfelt repentance. Also, he worshiped the
Lord alone and never flirted with the idea of compromising with any other gods. In his
psalms, we see the vicissitudes of the human condition before the permanence of God’s
reign. Such was the humanity and spirituality of the man who was about to begin a reign of
immortal memory.
King David
The time had come for David to become king. Saul, the Lord’s anointed, was dead and his
line was rejected by God. David, now the rightful king, had received God’s anointing
through Samuel. But before he made any moves towards the throne, David consulted the
Lord. The Lord told him to go up to Hebron in Judah, the former capital of King Saul.
Judah was his own tribe, and David had already secured much loyalty among his kinsmen.
They anointed him as king at Hebron in a public ceremony for all to see. To show his
loyalty to Saul and display his authority as the new king, he sent word to Jabesh-gilead
commending the Israelites there for honoring the remains of King Saul, but Jabesh-gilead
would not come under David’s rule for several more years. Saul still had one surviving son
by the name of Ishbaal, referred to in the Hebrew text as Ishbosheth, and Saul’s general
Abner established Ishbaal’s rule in all the tribes of Israel north of Judah.

Fighting broke out between the armies of Ishbaal and David. At first there were duels by
men selected from both sides, but this attempt at limited combat resulted merely in the
mutual slaughter of the men involved. Attempts for peace were further hampered by
personal vendettas on the part of David’s officers. Joab, David’s nephew, was the general
of his army; he was also the brother of Abishai and Asahel. He was a ruthless and vengeful
warrior, effective in David’s service but also difficult to manage. Now Ishbaal’s general
Abner had killed Joab’s brother Asahel in self-defense, since he was relentlessly pursuing
him. So Joab and Abishai sought revenge on Abner, slaughtering many of Ishbaal’s men in
battle. Joab did agree to a truce with Abner, ending the warring between the armies of
David and Ishbaal, but his vengeance would not relent until Abner was dead.

Meanwhile Ishbaal, whose rule was rather tenuous, was becoming afraid of Abner, whose
exercise of power in the kingdom was beginning to rival his own. Ishbaal accused Abner
of lying with the deceased King Saul’s concubine. Such an act implied a seizure of the
kingdom. Abner vehemently insisted on his past loyalty to Saul’s line but then said to
Ishbaal, “May God do thus to Abner, and more, if I do not carry out for David what the
LORD swore to him—that is, take away the kingdom from the house of Saul and establish
the throne of David over Israel as well as Judah, from Dan to Beer-sheba” (2 Samuel 3:9-
10).

So Abner defected and entered into a covenant with David to bring with him all the other
tribes of Israel. David also asked for Abner to bring back his wife Michal, and he did. But
Joab was still seeking vengeance on Abner for his brother’s death. So Joab went out after
Abner, and when he got him alone, he slew him. For this David cursed the house of Joab
and ordered mourning over the death of Abner, sending a message to his subjects that he
had no involvement in the death of Ishbaal’s former general. But David kept the skillful
Joab as his general, and he would win David many wars in the coming years.
Sometime later, Ishbaal was assassinated by two of his own officers, cut down while
sleeping in his own bed. The assailants then cut off Ishbaal’s head and brought it to David,
expecting a reward for murdering his enemy. But just as with the Amalekite who claimed to
have slain Saul, David had these men executed as well.

After more time had passed, the northern tribes of Israel came to David and asked for him
to rule over them as well. The people of Israel said, “Look! We are your bone and your
flesh. In days past, when Saul was still our king, you were the one who led Israel out in all
its battles and brought it back. And the LORD said to you: You shall shepherd my people
Israel; you shall be ruler over Israel” (2 Samuel 5:1-2). Then they anointed him king over
all Israel. Following Saul, only David and his son Solomon would reign over all Israel.
After Solomon’s time, the nation would be divided into the Kingdom of Israel in the north
and the Kingdom of Judah in the south, with the Davidic kings ruling over Judah.

Now that David had become king over all Israel, it was time for a new capital. So David
set his sights on Jerusalem, the holy city. Jerusalem was an ancient city. The historical
record goes back to at least the eighteenth or nineteenth century BC, with an Egyptian text
referring to the city as an enemy of Egypt (Navarre Bible: Joshua-Kings, 330). It was once
called Salem, and the book of Genesis tells us that in ancient times it was the home of
Melchizedek, priest of God and king of Salem, who blessed Abraham (Genesis 14). Mount
Moriah, or Mount Zion, at Jerusalem was also the site where Abraham was to sacrifice
Isaac, though the angel of the Lord prevented him (Genesis 22).

But first David had to clear out the Philistines from the northwest of Jerusalem. Since he
had become king over all Israel, they likewise sought to destroy him. First, David went to
the refuge, perhaps at Adullam northwest of Hebron, where he consulted the Lord. The
Lord told him to attack the Philistines and then told him not to attack from the front but to
wait for the Lord and his angels to fight for him. God told him, “Do not attack the front—
circle behind them and come against them near the balsam trees. When you hear the sound
of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, act decisively, for then the LORD has already
gone before you to strike the army of the Philistines” (2 Samuel 5:24). So David followed
the Lord’s instruction and, with the Lord’s help, routed the Philistines from the region near
Jerusalem. The place was then called Baal Perazim, which means ‘the Lord breaks them.’

So David set his sights on Jerusalem, which was inhabited by the Jebusites, who also
controlled some of the territory to the south of the city. The Jebusites, like the Amalekites,
were under the ban. David went up to Jerusalem to capture the city, but the Jebusites
boasted that even the blind and the lame would be able to thwart him—in other words, that
Jerusalem was such an impregnable stronghold that it wouldn’t even take strong warriors
to defend the city from attack. But David found a way into the city through the water shaft
and overtook the Jebusites without having to break through the walls of the city. Thus
David paved the way for Jerusalem to become the center of the nation and ultimately one of
the most important cities in the history of the world. He made it his capital, calling the
district where he established his headquarters the ‘City of David.’ Hiram, the king of Tyre,
showed his goodwill to the emerging King David by building him a house of cedar like the
palaces of the Canaanite kings. David’s family also grew, as he took several more wives
and begot many sons and daughters. We are told, “David now knew that the LORD had
truly established him as king over Israel and had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his
people Israel” (2 Samuel 5:12).
The Ark Enters Jerusalem
David had conquered the holy city of Jerusalem and made it his capital. He had established
himself there, securing his family and the future of his dynasty. But the holy city lacked one
thing that would be most suitable—the Ark of the Covenant, which was then a few miles
off at Baala of Judah, also called Kirjath-jearim. The Ark of the Covenant, constructed
under God’s direction, originally contained the tablets of the Ten Commandments inscribed
by God himself, the miraculous rod of Aaron, and some of the manna God had sent from
Heaven to feed the Israelites in the desert. The Ark did not merely contain these symbols of
God’s powerful action but brought with it the very presence of God himself. The Ark was
made of acacia wood, like that of the Burning Bush in which God appeared to Moses, and
it was coated with gold. God spoke to Moses from the Mercy Seat of the Ark, which was
the gilded cover between the wings of the cherubim. When Joshua and his army were
cornered across the Jordan River, the priests took up the Ark, and the waters parted so they
could cross on dry land. Again the Ark preceded the people at the battle of Jericho, when
God destroyed the city’s walls without any human machines of war. Throughout their
history, God brought many victories in battle for the Israelites carrying the Ark. Once when
the Ark was captured by the Philistines while God was punishing Israel for its sins, the Ark
wreaked such havoc on the Philistine towns and temple that they gladly returned it to the
Israelites.

David had the priests bring up the Ark of God from the house of Abinadab in a massive and
joyful procession of thirty thousand men. The destination was the City of David, but they
didn’t reach there. Touching the Ark was forbidden by the Law of Moses for any reason
except by those designated from the line of Aaron, and the Ark was to be carried on
wooden poles on the shoulders of the Levites. Instead David had the Ark fastened to a cart
—albeit a new cart—carried by oxen, and it began to tip. So Uzzah, one of Abinadab’s
sons reached out to steady the Ark. Immediately, God struck him down and he died, and
everyone became very afraid. David halted from bringing the Ark into his city, fearing to
stir up the anger of the Lord. He said, “How can the ark of the LORD come to me?” (2
Samuel 6:9). Luke’s Gospel alludes to this when Elizabeth greets Mary, a receptacle of an
even greater manifestation of God’s presence, saying, “And how does this happen to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43).

Then David had the Ark brought to the house of Obed-edom, waiting to see if God would
give a sign on what to do. Checking back several months later, David saw that God blessed
Obed-edom and his house, so he brought the Ark to its future home of Jerusalem. En route
to the holy city, David wasted no time in sacrificing to the Lord—only six steps forward
and he offered sacrifice in holy fear.

The procession went forward to Mount Zion with much singing, dancing, and the playing of
instruments of all sorts. The jubilant procession was a key moment in salvation history, and
the procession and ceremony was certainly quite elaborate. In reference even to David’s
first attempt to move the Ark to Jerusalem, we are told, “David and all the house of Israel
danced before the LORD with all their might, with singing, and with lyres, harps,
tambourines, sistrums, and cymbals” (2 Samuel 6:5). Perhaps as they went up they sang and
played to a triumphant processional psalm such as Psalm 68, which is attributed to David:

May God arise;

may his enemies be scattered;
may those who hate him flee before him…

Sing to God, praise his name;

exalt the rider of the clouds.
Rejoice before him
whose name is the LORD….

God, when you went forth before your people,

when you marched through the desert,

The earth quaked, the heavens poured,

before God, the One of Sinai,
before God, the God of Israel.…

You mountain of God, mountain of Bashan,

you rugged mountain, mountain of Bashan,
You rugged mountains, why look with envy
at the mountain where God has chosen to dwell,
where the LORD resides forever?
God’s chariots were myriad, thousands upon thousands;
from Sinai the Lord entered the holy place.
You went up to its lofty height;
you took captives, received slaves as tribute,
even rebels, for the LORD God to dwell.

Blessed be the Lord day by day,

God, our salvation, who carries us….

Your procession comes into view, O God,

your procession into the holy place, my God and king.
The singers go first, the harpists follow;
 in their midst girls sound the timbrels.
In your choirs, bless God;
LORD, Israel’s fountain.
In the lead is Benjamin, few in number;
there the princes of Judah, a large throng,
the princes of Zebulun, the princes of Naphtali, too.

Summon again, O God, your power,

the divine power you once showed for us,
From your temple on behalf of Jerusalem,
that kings may bring you tribute….
Let bronze be brought from Egypt,
Ethiopia hurry its hands to God.

You kingdoms of the earth, sing to God;

chant the praises of the Lord,

Who rides the heights of the ancient heavens,

Who sends forth his voice as a mighty voice?
Confess the power of God,
whose majesty protects Israel,
whose power is in the sky.
Awesome is God in his holy place,
the God of Israel,
who gives power and strength to his people.
Blessed be God! (Psalm 68:2-36)

Finally the Ark came into Jerusalem. David was lost in ecstatic praise of God, much like
the prophets of the day, dancing before the Lord with abandon, and lightly clad in a priestly
ephod. David then sacrificed again before the Lord once the Ark came to its resting place.
The Bible looks favorably on David’s officiating over these sacrifices despite not being a
Levite. The authority to sacrifice clearly comes from his legitimate kingship, but while
some scholars say that kings at this time had the duty to offer sacrifices, others say that it
was an authority that came particularly from being king of Jerusalem. As such, he was the
successor to the priestly king Melchizedek of an order that preceded the Levitical
priesthood. Psalm 110, attributed to David, refers to David in saying:

The LORD has sworn and will not waver:

“You are a priest forever in the manner of Melchizedek.” (Psalm 110:4)
When David came home, however, his wife Michal had little esteem for the Ark having
come to Jerusalem or for David presiding over the sacrifices on this joyous occasions.
Rather, her concern was for the embarrassment her husband had brought upon himself and
the family by dancing in such an undignified manner and preferring the simple priestly
ephod to his kingly regalia even in view of the servant girls. Growing up as royalty, the
daughter of Saul had her standards of kingly propriety, and this conduct was unacceptable
to her. He responded to her, “I was dancing before the LORD. As the LORD lives, who
chose me over your father and all his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD’s
people, Israel, not only will I make merry before the LORD, but I will demean myself even
more. I will be lowly in your eyes, but in the eyes of the slave girls you spoke of I will be
somebody” (2 Samuel 6:21-22). Because of this, David’s successor would also not be
through Saul’s line, for Second Samuel tells us that Michal was “childless to the day she
died” (2 Samuel 6:23).
God’s Covenant with David
Sitting in his house of cedar built for him by the king of Tyre, David thought it unfitting that
the Ark of the Covenant was merely housed in a tent. God had directed Moses to construct
a tent, called the Tabernacle, to house the Ark of the Covenant as it moved about with the
people. But now that God had firmly established his kingdom and “given him rest from his
enemies on every side” (2 Samuel 7:1), David thought the time had come to build a temple
—and what better place than Mount Zion where the priest Melchizedek had reigned as king
and where Abraham had shown his willingness to sacrifice his only son Isaac. He probably
thought back to what God had told Moses on how the Ark of the Covenant would finally
come to its final home:

But after you have crossed the Jordan and dwell in the land which the Lord, your
God, is giving you as a heritage, when he has given you rest from all your enemies
round about and you live there in security, then to the place which the Lord, your
God, chooses as the dwelling place for his name you shall bring all that I command
you: your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and personal contributions, and
every special offering you have vowed to the Lord. You shall rejoice in the presence
of the Lord, your God, with your sons and daughters, your male and female slaves, as
well as with the Levite within your gates, who has no hereditary portion with you.
(Deuteronomy 12:10-12)

At first the prophet Nathan concurred with David, but then he came back with an oracle
from God. The Lord was pleased with David’s zeal for the Ark, but the Temple was to be
built by a man of peace, not a man of war. This man would be David’s son Solomon,
whose very name means peace. At this point in the narrative, however, Solomon’s birth has
not yet come.

God drew up a covenant with David, saying, “Is it you who would build me a house to
dwell in? … the LORD will make a house for you” (2 Samuel 7:5, 11). In this play on
words, the ‘house’ God would build for David would be a family, and more specifically a
royal dynasty. It would be part of God’s plan, perpetuated not merely by human effort, but
by Providence. The oracle from the Lord continues, “when your days have been completed
and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, sprung from your
loins, and I will establish his kingdom. He it is who shall build a house for my name, and I
will establish his royal throne forever” (2 Samuel 7:12-13).

David’s dynasty was one of the longest lasting dynasties in the history of the world, lasting
for several hundred years. But there is more. “I will be a father to him, and he shall be a
son to me” (2 Sam. 7:14). Here, for the first time, God refers to a human being as his ‘son.’
While we take for granted today that all are children of God, it was not seen that way in the
ancient world. God was wholly different from the human race; God was creator, but if he
was ever seen as a father, it was in an analogous sense only. The Gospels call Jesus the
“Son of God” and the “Son of David” (Mark 1:1, Matthew 1:1). Through the eyes of
Christian faith, we can see in Christ the eternal King the fulfillment of God’s promises to
David of a dynasty that would last forever.

On another level, biblical theologian Scott Hahn notices that God’s promises to David
fulfilled the covenant promises he had made to his forefather Abraham over a millennium
before. God promised both to make their names great, to cause kings to come from their
line, and to bring blessing to the whole world through them.

Drawing out the Hebrew sense often lost in translation, Hahn paraphrases David’s prayer
of thanksgiving in this manner: “O God, you have done all these glorious deeds and made
this promise for my house. You’ve pledged yourself to do great things for my dynasty. Yet
all of this is small in your eyes, since what you have really given me is the covenant law
for all the nations, your entire human family. I can’t believe my ears. Who am I, your lowly
servant, that you would do this for me and my son?” (A Father Who Keeps His Promises,
213). Hahn’s translation of the Hebrew in Second Samuel, chapter 7, shows that David
understood God’s promises as a covenant with him—an ever-binding agreement with
duties in both directions that merge the parties into a family. It further showed that David
believed that his kingdom would have universal significance in revealing God’s glory to
the nations.

Though seemingly under the surface in Second Samuel, these themes of covenant and
universal mission are further developed in the Psalms. The Psalms clearly see God’s
promises to David and David’s to God as a covenant, as in Psalm 89:

I will sing of your mercy forever, Lord

proclaim your faithfulness through all ages.
For I said, “My mercy is established forever;
my faithfulness will stand as long as the heavens.

I have made a covenant with my chosen one;

I have sworn to David my servant:
I will make your dynasty stand forever
and establish your throne through all ages.” (Psalm 89:2-5)

Whereas Moses’ concerns were for the Hebrew people and not for the world, the Psalms
further see God’s covenant with David and his kingdom as having universal significance.
We read in Psalm 72, attributed to Solomon as a prayer for himself as king:
 O God, give your judgment to the king;
your justice to the king’s son;
That he may govern your people with justice,
your oppressed with right judgment….

May he rule from sea to sea,

from the river to the ends of the earth….

May his name be forever;

as long as the sun, may his name endure.
May the tribes of the earth give blessings with his name;
may all the nations regard him as favored.
Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel,
who alone does wonderful deeds.
Blessed be his glorious name forever;
may he fill all the earth with his glory.
Amen and amen. (Psalm 72:2, 8, 17-19)

In David’s day and more so in Solomon’s, the kingdom ruled over territories beyond Israel,
thus making the Lord’s name great there. David’s political dominance was a dream come
true to the Israelites who would never again see such prosperity except under his son
Solomon. He defeated the Philistines and the Amalekites to the southwest, the Edomites to
the south, the Moabites across the Dead Sea to the southeast, the Ammonites to the east, and
the Arameans to the northeast—all the traditional enemies of the Israelites. Many pagan
lords also became vassal kings under David. Given the Lord’s favor shown to him in these
astonishing successes, it is not hard to see why he was always held as the greatest king of
Israel. At least in retrospect, he was seen as the ideal king of Israel. We find this summary
of his reign in Second Samuel: “David was king over all Israel; he dispensed justice and
right to all his people” (2 Samuel 8:15).

Nonetheless, David’s reign was not universal and the justice he typically served was not
without waver. But one day Jesus, the ever-righteous Son of David, would command his
disciples, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I
am with you always, until the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).

David’s justice, in fact, would leave some gaping holes

David’s Lapse
After some time, David grew complacent in his power and comfortable in the pleasures of
his lifestyle. Though he typically went out in battle with his men, on one spring expedition
he sent them with the Ark of the Covenant off to battle against the Ammonites while he
enjoyed the comforts of home. Unoccupied and bored, he stepped out on his roof and spied
a beautiful woman bathing, probably in an estate with a courtyard in a valley below, and he
lusted after her. So David sent his servants to find out about the woman and then to bring
her to him. Her name was Bathsheba, the only wife of Uriah the Hittite. Uriah, a foreign
mercenary who had taken this Hebrew woman as his wife, was the armor bearer of
David’s general Joab and was away at war (Layman’s Bible Commentary vol. 6, p. 136).
So David slept with Bathsheba. The woman later found out that she was with child through
David and sent word to the king.

Adultery was not merely a political scandal, but a crime in Israel. In fact, according to the
Law of Moses it was a capital offense; a king would probably be spared this punishment,
but word getting out would be a great disgrace. So David had to cover up his deed at all
costs. In his first attempt, he summoned Uriah from the battlefield to ask for a report on the
war. Upon receiving Uriah’s report on the success of the war, he encouraged the soldier to
return home to his wife, hoping that he would sleep with her and the child would be taken
to be his. But Uriah honored the Hebrew military code of abstinence during holy war and
stayed instead in the military encampment. And unlike David, he was unwilling to rest
while his fellow soldiers were at war. So in David’s second attempt at a cover-up, he
invited Uriah to his palace and tried to make him drunk so that surely he would return home
and sleep with his wife. But even when drunk, Uriah did not return home, but only to the
military encampment.

So in David’s final and desperate attempt to cover up his crime, he summoned Uriah to
carry a sealed letter to Joab. In it, the king commanded his general Joab to position Uriah
in the battle where he would most likely be killed and then to pull back. Joab did this and
Uriah died in battle, killed by a woman who threw a millstone down over the city wall at
Thebez. Other Israelites likely died needlessly in battle that day because of this attempt to
put Uriah in harm’s way near the city walls of the enemy (NABRE footnote).

Upon hearing the report of the battle from Joab’s messenger and how poorly it went, David
sent back this message to Joab after learning that Uriah had also died: “Do not let this be a
great evil in your sight, for the sword devours now here and now there” (2 Samuel 11:25).
The chapter ends ominously in Second Samuel: “When the wife of Uriah heard that her
husband had died, she mourned her lord. But once the mourning was over, David sent for
her and brought her into his house. She became his wife and bore him a son. But in the sight
of the LORD what David had done was evil” (2 Samuel 11:26-27).
The prophet Nathan went to David with an oracle from the Lord. Nathan presented a
marvelously crafted parable to the king in a form that is closest in the Bible to the parables
of Jesus. He came to David and said,

“Tell me how you judge this case: In a certain town there were two men, one rich, the
other poor. The rich man had flocks and herds in great numbers. But the poor man
had nothing at all except one little ewe lamb that he had bought. He nourished her,
and she grew up with him and his children. Of what little he had she ate; from his
own cup she drank; in his bosom she slept; she was like a daughter to him. Now, a
visitor came to the rich man, but he spared his own flocks and herds to prepare a
meal for the traveler who had come to him: he took the poor man’s ewe lamb and
prepared it for the one who had come to him.” David grew very angry with that man
and said to Nathan: “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves death!
He shall make fourfold restitution for the lamb because he has done this and was
unsparing.” Then Nathan said to David: “You are the man!” (2 Samuel 12:1-7)

Nathan then expressed the Lord’s disappointment that David had betrayed his
commandments so grievously even after the Lord had done so much for him. Nathan then
pronounced God’s retributive justice upon David and his house: the sword would never
leave his house, trouble would come more from within David’s family than from his open
enemies, and someday his own wives would be stolen in view of all Israel.

Whereas Saul, in a similar position, had tried to make excuses for himself when
approached by the Lord’s prophet and only repented for show, David’s repentance was
sincere and from the heart. He said, “I have sinned against the LORD” (2 Samuel 11:13).
Psalm 51, traditionally known as the Miserere, is attributed to David at this time:

Have mercy on me, God, in accord with your merciful love;

in your abundant compassion blot out my transgressions.
Thoroughly wash away my guilt;
and from my sin cleanse me.
For I know my transgressions;
my sin is always before me.
Against you, you alone have I sinned;
I have done what is evil in your eyes
So that you are just in your word,
and without reproach in your judgment.
Behold, I was born in guilt,
in sin my mother conceived me.
 Behold, you desire true sincerity;
and secretly you teach me wisdom.
Cleanse me with hyssop, that I may be pure;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
You will let me hear gladness and joy;
the bones you have crushed will rejoice.

Turn away your face from my sins;

blot out all my iniquities.
A clean heart create for me, God;
renew within me a steadfast spirit.
Do not drive me from before your face,
nor take from me your holy spirit.
Restore to me the gladness of your salvation;
uphold me with a willing spirit.
I will teach the wicked your ways,
that sinners may return to you.
Rescue me from violent bloodshed, God, my saving God,
and my tongue will sing joyfully of your justice.
Lord, you will open my lips;
and my mouth will proclaim your praise.
For you do not desire sacrifice or I would give it;
a burnt offering you would not accept.
My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit;
a contrite, humbled heart, O God, you will not scorn…. (Psalm 51:3-19)

St. Augustine reflected on the moral lesson of David’s fall and of his repentance, “…many
men will to fall with David, and will not to rise with David. Not then for falling is the
example set forth, but if you shall have fallen for rising again. Take heed lest you fall. Not
the delight of the younger be the lapse of the elder, but be the fall of the elder the dread of
the younger” (Exposition on Psalm 51:3, translated by J. E. Tweed,
newadvent.org/fathers/1801122.htm).

Following David’s repentance, Nathan pronounced God’s forgiveness on him, though this
did not exempt him or his house from temporal punishment in restitution for what he had
done. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “The forgiveness of sin and
restoration of communion with God entail the remission of the eternal punishment of sin,
but temporal punishment of sin remains” (no. 1473). As David wrote in Psalm 23, “your
rod and your staff comfort me” (v. 4), and thus God guided David back to “right paths”
through difficulties (v. 3). The Lord, however, did not take away his dynasty or condemn
him to death, but Nathan foretold that the child would die for David’s sin. Bathsheba bore
David a male child, but the child was not well. So David put on sackcloth and ashes, laid
prostrate on the ground, and refused to eat, pleading with the Lord to spare the child. On
the seventh day the child died, and David arose from his fast.

Bathsheba was now David’s lawful wife, and she soon bore him another son—Solomon,
the future, though unlikely, successor to his father’s throne. Bathsheba would even appear
along with only four women referenced in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel
(Matthew 1:6). Meanwhile, all the curses on David’s house that Nathan had pronounced
from the Lord were to come to pass in retribution for his sin.
The Wages of Sin
David had many wives and thus many children. Trouble began to brew when one of his
sons became passionate over one of his daughters through another wife. Actually it was not
merely any son, but his firstborn son, Amnon, born to his wife Ahinoam while David was
king in Hebron. And the daughter was Tamar, born to Maacah, a foreign princess from
Geshur whom David had married. Tamar, who was a virgin and pure, was very beautiful.
The “high-spirited” Amnon could not control his passion for Tamar, so he resorted to a
scheme devised by a friend of his to seduce her. Amnon feigned illness and then asked his
father David to send Tamar to come to his chamber to cook for him, and his father granted
his request. So Tamar came to Amnon who was apparently ill and in bed. But he sent his
attendants away so that the two were alone and insisted that she feed him by hand. Then
Amnon tried to seduce her, but Tamar protested, “No, my brother! Do not force me! This is
not done in Israel. Do not commit this terrible crime” (2 Samuel 13:12). But Amnon raped
his sister, and then his passion toward her turned to hatred and he cast her out, broken and
shamed. Tamar was very much shaken up by what happened, so her full brother Absalom
took her in for protection.

Reports of what took place angered David, but he took no action against this crime of his
firstborn son. Meanwhile Absalom, Tamar’s brother, plotted his revenge in silence. After
two years, Absalom hosted a feast to celebrate the sheep-shearing and invited the whole
royal court. David did not attend, but reluctantly allowed Amnon to go, along with his other
sons. After the feast when Amnon was drunk, Absalom had men strike him down and kill
him. A false report first reached David that Absalom had killed all his brothers, potential
claimants to the throne, so David sent out men to search for Absalom. He was at least
somewhat relieved to find out that in fact only Amnon was killed, in revenge for the rape,
and David eventually gave up the search for Absalom and let him go. Meanwhile Absalom
fled to his maternal grandfather Talmai, king of Geshur, a land northeast of Israel, and
remained with him for three years.

Joab wanted David to allow Absalom to return to Israel, so he brought up the matter
through a woman at Tekoa who pretended to have a case for David to try. The woman
claimed that she was a widow and had two sons, but that one son had killed the other. Her
neighbors wanted her remaining son, the murderer, to be put to death, but then her
husband’s line would be ended and his name would not continue in the land. David sided
on behalf of the woman and assured protection for her only son. Then the woman revealed
that the case was really about the king and his estranged son Absalom, and David
understood that it was actually his general Joab who was bringing the issue to light in this
manner (2 Samuel 14).

So David sent Joab to Geshur to bring back Absalom to Israel in safety, as long as he did
not bring Absalom into his presence. But after two years Absalom was intent on seeing his
father, though it was only to have the king’s ear and not for true reconciliation. Absalom
tried twice to have Joab come so that he could present his request to David, but Joab did
not answer, respecting the king’s wishes. So to get his attention, Absalom had one of Joab’s
fields set on fire. Then Joab came to Absalom to confront him about this arson, and
Absalom gave his message for the king, who acquiesced and allowed his son to appear
before him. He came, and the two embraced, but Absalom’s next request of his father, four
years later, would be a treacherous one—permission to hold a sacrifice at Hebron, the
former capital. This would be the cover under which Absalom would gather a large
number of men to himself to establish his own kingdom in rebellion to his father. But first
Absalom worked on ingratiating himself to the Israelites and winning them over through his
cunning. As people approached the royal court to have their cases tried, Absalom would
greet them very warmly and tell them that the king’s court could not hear their case, but if
only he were made a judge over Israel, he would certainly give them a favorable judgment.

In David’s reign, some of the warnings Samuel had given the people about the nature of the
monarchy had come to pass, and some of the people had become disgruntled. David
conscripted his subjects both for war and for labor. His adultery with Bathsheba was
probably known in the land. In addition, some saw his succession after Saul as a
usurpation, and various people also had particular grievances with his rule. Absalom
further took advantage of the likely disappointment that the people of Hebron felt over the
capital being moved from there to Jerusalem. So, surrounded by his supporters, Absalom
had himself proclaimed king at Hebron..
Absalom’s Rebellion
Given that attack on Jerusalem would come any day from Absalom and his forces, David
decided to leave the holy city for Absalom to take peacefully rather than subject it to the
ravages of war. At first David’s high priests, Zadok and Abiathar, took the Ark of the
Covenant along with the men on their retreat from Jerusalem, but David had them return it.
He said to Zadok, “Take the ark of God back to the city. If I find favor with the LORD, he
will bring me back and permit me to see it and its lodging place. But if he should say, ‘I am
not pleased with you,’ I am ready; let him do to me as he sees fit” (2 Samuel 15:32). Such
was David’s faith in Providence and acceptance of God’s just punishments.

Psalm 3 is attributed to David during this time:

How many are my foes, Lord!

How many rise against me!
How many say of me,
“There is no salvation for him in God.”

But you, Lord, are a shield around me;

my glory, you keep my head high.

With my own voice I will call out to the Lord,

and he will answer me from his holy mountain.

I lie down and I fall asleep,

[and] I will wake up, for the Lord sustains me.
I do not fear, then, thousands of people
arrayed against me on every side.

Arise, Lord! Save me, my God!

For you strike the cheekbone of all my foes;
you break the teeth of the wicked.
Salvation is from the Lord!
May your blessing be upon your people! (Psalm 3:2-9)

While passing Bahurim a few miles northeast of Jerusalem in their retreat, David and his
men came across a Benjamite named Shimei who cursed him and threw stones at him. He
was a relative of Saul, so he called out to David, “Get out! Get out! You man of blood, you
scoundrel! The LORD has paid you back for all the blood shed from the family of Saul,
whom you replaced as king, and the LORD has handed over the kingdom to your son
Absalom. And now look at you: you suffer ruin because you are a man of blood” (2 Samuel
16:7-8). David’s men could have easily had Shimei killed and Abishai, Joab’s brother,
wanted to do this to defend the king’s honor. But David held him back, saying, “What
business is it of mine or of yours, sons of Zeruiah, that he curses? Suppose the LORD has
told him to curse David; who then will dare to say, ‘Why are you doing this?’ … If my own
son, who came forth from my loins, is seeking my life, how much more might this
Benjamite do so! Let him alone and let him curse, for the LORD has told him to. Perhaps
the LORD will look upon my affliction and repay me with good for the curses he is uttering
this day” (2 Samuel 16:10-12).

Meanwhile David was distressed that one of his most trusted advisors Ahithophel,
grandfather of Bathsheba, had gone over to Absalom on invitation. We read in Psalm 41,
attributed to David, of such a circumstance:

All those who hate me whisper together against me;

they imagine the worst about me…
Even my trusted friend,
who ate my bread,
has raised his heel against me. (Psalm 41:8, 10)

Knowing that Ahithophel could bring about success to Absalom’s rebellion and downfall
to him, David prayed that the Lord would thwart his counsels. So David sent his friend
Hushai to deceive Anakin and counter Ahithophel. Hushai went over to Absalom, who had
by then entered Jerusalem, and he pretended to transfer his loyalties to him. Absalom took
Hushai in as one of his advisors, given that he was a former advisor to his father. But
Ahithophel’s counsels were already bringing blows upon David.

Following Ahithophel’s counsel, Absalom had a tent placed on the palace roof for all to
see as he went in to have relations with David’s concubines, who were still in Jerusalem.
This counsel, which came through Ahithophel, who was Bathsheba’s grandfather, fulfilled
the prophecy of Nathan that one day David’s wives would be stolen in plain view.

Then Ahithophel advised Absalom to send men to kill David while he was trapped before
the Jordan River. But Hushai countered him, appealing to Absalom’s pride, advising him to
first draw to himself all Israel and then march on David together. This pleased Absalom
and bid David enough time to escape across the Jordan, since Hushai then secretly sent
word to him through the high priests Zadok and Abiathar of the plans being discussed by
Absalom’s advisors. Being that his counsel had been thwarted and that it would likely lead
to Absalom’s defeat, Ahithophel returned to his home city and hanged himself.

Meanwhile preparations were being made for the great battle between the forces of David
and Absalom at Mahanaim across the River Jordan. David instructed his commanders
Joab, Abishai, and Ittai to bring back his son Absalom alive, and the king’s order was
conveyed to all the soldiers. David’s armies won the battle and brought heavy losses on
Absalom’s forces. Absalom himself fled on the back of a mule through the woods, but as he
was riding, his long, thick hair got snagged on a branch of an oak tree, and he was left
hanging as the mule broke free. One of David’s soldiers spotted him and reported it to
Joab. Joab disregarded David’s command not to kill Absalom and with the help of his men,
killed the king’s rebellious son while he was caught in the tree. They then buried him there
in the forest.

Now the trick was telling David the news about the victory, but also the countering of his
orders with regard to his son. Ahimaaz, son of Zadok the high priest, wanted to be the one
to run with the news, but Joab tried to prevent him, realizing that the king would not be
pleased. So Joab sent an Ethiopian foreigner, a Cushite, to do the task. Ahimaaz insisted on
going as well, so Joab permitted it.

David was encouraged at the sight of Ahimaaz. Ahimaaz said to the king, “Blessed be the
LORD your God, who has delivered up the men who rebelled against my lord the king” (2
Samuel 18:28). But besides the victor, David wanted news of Absalom’s safety. It would
be the Cushite who would present this part of the news: “May the enemies of my lord the
king and all who rebel against you with evil intent be as that young man!” (2 Samuel
18:32). At this, David began to mourn and wail. He cried out, “My son Absalom! My son,
my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Samuel
19:1). David continued for some time with this conflicted emotional display, and it
discouraged the soldiers and the people. So Joab went to the king and advised him to
consider the family and the subjects who had been saved by his men’s victory and to show
gratitude for the sacrifices the soldiers had made and magnanimity to the people divided by
this civil war.

David took his general’s advice. But before he would cross the Jordan and march to
reclaim Jerusalem, David awaited the will of the people. The people were divided on
what to do. The Israelites were ready to welcome him, but the Judahites were more
hesitant since Absalom had won a greater following among them in the region surrounding
Hebron. But in the end, David won them over through magnanimity and reconciliatory
words and they took him back as king over all Israel. David even replaced the disobedient
general Joab with Amasa, who was Absalom’s general. The people were still divided
among themselves, but now they were once again united by David. They even quarreled
about which tribes were more loyal to him. A man named Sheba tried to take advantage of
the divisions among the people by provoking another rebellion among the Israelites. Amasa
went in pursuit of Sheba, but Joab, vengeful as ever, murdered Amasa in the meanwhile in
the same manner as he had done to Abner. Then Joab besieged Sheba at Abel Beth-maacah
in northern Israel. The people of the city did not want war and were not loyal to Sheba, so
they executed him and hurled his severed head over the city wall. With this, David’s
kingdom was at last restored in security, and the king reached out in peace to many of those
who had opposed him.

David typically understood that the people belonged to God and not only to him. But once
David became overconfident, ordering a census of all the people. This move displeased
the Lord since it implied that the people belonged to the king to do with however he saw fit
—to tax them and conscript them for war and labor. The census came back reporting
800,000 men in Israel capable of military service and 500,000 in Judah. David already
regretted what he had done as an offense to God’s sovereignty over the nation, so the Lord
sent to him the prophet Gad to announce his punishment, but to offer him three choices.

[Gad] asked: “Should three years of famine come upon your land; or three months of
fleeing from your enemy while he pursues you; or is it to be three days of plague in
your land? Now consider well: what answer am I to give to him who sent me?”
David answered Gad: “I am greatly distressed. But let us fall into the hand of God,
whose mercy is great, rather than into human hands.” Thus David chose the plague.
(2 Samuel 24:13-15)

The plague was very disastrous and seventy thousand perished, so David pleaded with the
Lord to instead place the punishment on him and his house. The Lord halted his hand at
Jerusalem at the threshing floor of Araunah, elsewhere called Ornan, atop Mount Moriah.
David was there and witnessed this, so Gad sent the word of the Lord to the king that he
was to build an altar on the spot. So David sought that land from Araunah, who offered to
give him the land and also the livestock for the great sacrifice. But David refused, insisting
on paying full price so he could offer a fitting and meaningful sacrifice to God. David
purchased the threshing floor on Mount Moriah and the Lord sent fire from Heaven to
consume the offering on David’s altar (1 Chronicles 21:26). The spot became the site of the
future temple, built after his death by his son Solomon.
The Succession to Solomon
David was beginning to show signs of age. Once while the king went out with his men to
battle against the Philistines, he became weary and was almost captured by the Philistines.
But his faithful warrior Abishai was attentive to what was going on and slew the Philistine
before he could get to the king. That was the end of David’s battle days (2 Samuel 21).

David lived to be about seventy years old, but he was bedridden in his last days. While he
was in bed, his oldest surviving son Adonijah, born to David from Haggith at Hebron,
proclaimed himself king without his father’s knowledge. He went about with a retinue of
fifty men and celebrated a great sacrifice at En-rogel. Adonijah won over the support of the
general Joab and the high priest Abiathar who counseled him, but most of David’s court,
including the high priest Zadok and the prophet Nathan, rejected his pretension.

Bathsheba went to David and protested, reminding David of an oath he had sworn that her
son Solomon would be king after him. The prophet Nathan came in just as she was
speaking and likewise decried the pretentious actions of Adonijah. So even though
Solomon was not the eldest, David established him as king after him and gave orders
regarding the manner in which he would be proclaimed king. So Solomon was anointed
king over all Israel by the prophet Nathan at Gihon and then he sat on his father’s throne in
Jerusalem with his father’s blessing. His father even paid homage to him as the new king.

When David was at last on his deathbed, he called King Solomon to himself, saying,

I am going the way of all the earth. Be strong and be a man! Keep the mandate of the
LORD, your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, commands,
ordinances, and decrees as they are written in the law of Moses, that you may
succeed in whatever you do, and wherever you turn, and that the LORD may fulfill
the word he spoke concerning me: If your sons so conduct themselves that they walk
before me in faithfulness with their whole heart and soul, there shall never be
wanting someone of your line on the throne of Israel. (1 Kings 2:2-4)

When Adonijah and his men received the news at En-rogel that David had made Solomon
king after him, they dispersed and Adonijah himself fled, clinging to the horns of the altar.
By holding on to these protrusions on the corners of the altar where the sacrificial blood
was smeared, Adonijah was claiming sacred refuge. Solomon allowed him to return home
after having him acknowledge his kingship. But then Adonijah made a request to
Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother.

In the ancient near-east, the most powerful woman of the court was the queen mother, since
the king typically had many wives. One of the roles of the queen mother was to intercede of
behalf of plaintiffs to her son the king. In the Gospel, Mary took this role when she
interceded to Jesus at the wedding of Cana, leading to Jesus’ changing the water into wine.

Adonijah asked that after David’s death if he could take his beautiful young concubine
Abishag as his wife. When Solomon heard the request, he realized that it was in reality a
plot on behalf of Adonijah to claim the kingship, since claiming the king’s concubines or
wives was tantamount to claiming his kingship. So he had Adonijah executed. He also
executed Joab for his murders of Abner and Amasa and his support of Adonijah’s claim to
the throne, and banished Abiathar, the high priest who had supported Adonijah—thus
fulfilling the prophecy of Samuel regarding the end of Eli’s priestly line. Solomon kept
Shimei, who was a threat to his kingdom as a supporter of Saul’s line, close by with orders
not to leave Jerusalem. Shimei violated the orders and Solomon had him executed, thus
presumably undoing the curses he had made against David and his line during Absalom’s
rebellion. By following his father’s directions for completing the justice that David had
been unable to bring about during his own lifetime, Solomon solidly secured his dominion.
He in part fulfilled God’s promise to David that his own son would sit on his throne.

The Lord appeared to Solomon in the dream while he was at Gibeon to sacrifice to the
Lord. God offered to grant him a request, and Solomon requested wisdom and an
understanding heart to know how to govern the people justly. God granted Solomon this
request and gave him wealth, international renown, and long life besides. His domain was
even vaster than that of his father. We read in First Kings, “Solomon ruled over all the
kingdoms from the [Euphrates] River to the land of the Philistines, down to the border of
Egypt; they paid Solomon tribute and served him as long as he lived” (1 Kings 5:1). We are
further told, “Solomon also uttered three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered a
thousand and five. He spoke of plants, from the cedar on Lebanon to the hyssop growing
out of the wall, and he spoke about beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes. People from all
nations came to hear Solomon’s wisdom, sent by all the kings of the earth who had heard of
his wisdom” (1 Kings 5:12-14).

Solomon fulfilled his father’s dream of building a temple for the Lord. He built it from the
finest materials available and brought in the best builders to see it to completion. When the
Temple was dedicated after seven years of construction, we read, “When the priests left the
holy place, the cloud filled the house of the LORD so that the priests could no longer
minister because of the cloud, since the glory of the LORD had filled the house of the
LORD” (1 Kings 8:10-11). Solomon also built himself a palace and a house for the
princess of Egypt whom he took as his wife. He also built up the walls of Jerusalem. In
fact, in 2010, National Geographic reported that archaeologists unearthed a stretch of wall
between the City of David and the Temple Mount that dated to the tenth century BC—the
time of Solomon.
Thus, under David’s son Solomon, Jerusalem had become an important imperial capital,
religious destination, and center of international commerce.
David: Father of the Psalter
First Samuel tells us that from his youth, David was a “skillful harpist” (1 Samuel 16:18).
Saul’s servants sought him out to comfort the king who was tormented by an evil spirit.
First and Second Samuel also give us a taste of some of David’s psalms. In Second
Samuel, we saw how David danced before the Ark and how there was singing and many
instruments were utilized in the procession to Mount Zion.

The Egyptians were accustomed to using song to worship their gods, and the Hebrews may
have learned the concept from them (see p. 29 of Marie Pierik’s The Psalter in the Temple
and the Church). Prior to David, there is little reference to music in the public worship that
Israel offered to God. There is only the story in Exodus of how Moses’ sister Miriam took
up the tambourine and led the women in song and dance, praising God’s deliverance of the
people with the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 15). But the Law of Moses made no
reference to sacred music. Ecstatic prophets in the time of Saul and David employed
music, but this was not liturgical and not part of the mainstream of Israelite worship.

First Chronicles tells us that David as king instituted the cult of temple music: “David
commanded the commanders of the Levites to appoint their brothers as singers and to play
on musical instruments, harps, lyres, and cymbals, to make a loud sound of rejoicing” (1
Chronicles 15:16). In fact, beginning with David’s command, liturgical music itself became
a priestly function, and a number of Levitical families were assigned this role so that music
would be offered before the Lord continuously, first in the Tabernacle and then in the
Temple. In Second Chronicles, we find this awe-inspiring account of the role of priestly
musicians at the dedication of Solomon’s Temple:

When the priests left the holy place (all the priests who were present had purified
themselves regardless of the rotation of their various divisions), the Levites who
were singers, all who belonged to Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and
brothers, clothed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps, and lyres, stood east of the altar,
and with them a hundred and twenty priests blowing trumpets. When the trumpeters
and singers were heard as a single voice praising and giving thanks to the LORD,
and when they raised the sound of the trumpets, cymbals, and other musical
instruments to “Praise the LORD, who is so good, whose love endures forever,” the
cloud filled the house of the LORD. The priests could no longer minister because of
the cloud, since the glory of the LORD had filled the house of God. (2 Chronicles
5:11-14)

Starting with David, sacred music became integral to the liturgical worship of the Temple.
Generations of Levitical families passed these duties on to their sons. When they played
and sang, they wore priestly attire, and the Lord, by manifesting himself in their presence,
accepted their music as an act of worship, but certainly not as mere entertainment for the
people like sometimes we see it today. The Psalms, variously arranged into collections,
were the content of their music, and most were probably devised for this very purpose. In
fact, a dozen of the Psalms are attributed to Asaph, the leader of music mentioned in the
passage above and whom David had appointed. Meanwhile 72 of the 150 Psalms are
attributed to David himself. Psalms were often sung in a responsorial form; the line
repeated in the dedication service above was “whose love endures forever.” A similar
response is found in a number of the Psalms, including Psalm 136, sometimes called the
Great Hallel, meaning the Great Praise:

Praise the Lord, for he is good;

for his mercy endures forever;
Praise the God of gods;
for his mercy endures forever;
Praise the Lord of lords;
for his mercy endures forever;

Who alone has done great wonders,

for his mercy endures forever;
Who skillfully made the heavens,
for his mercy endures forever;
Who spread the earth upon the waters,
for his mercy endures forever;
Who made the great lights,
for his mercy endures forever;
The sun to rule the day,
for his mercy endures forever;
The moon and stars to rule the night,
for his mercy endures forever;

Who struck down the firstborn of Egypt,

for his mercy endures forever;
And led Israel from their midst,
for his mercy endures forever;
With mighty hand and outstretched arm,
for his mercy endures forever;
Who split in two the Red Sea,
for his mercy endures forever;
And led Israel through its midst,
for his mercy endures forever;
 But swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea,
for his mercy endures forever;
Who led the people through the desert,
for his mercy endures forever;

Who struck down great kings,

for his mercy endures forever;
Slew powerful kings,
for his mercy endures forever;
Sihon, king of the Amorites,
for his mercy endures forever;
Og, king of Bashan,
for his mercy endures forever;
And made their lands a heritage,
for his mercy endures forever;
A heritage for Israel, his servant,
for his mercy endures forever…. (Psalm 136:1-22)

The first great translation of the Old Testament was into Greek. It was called the Septuagint
and was compiled about a century before Christ. Our term ‘psalm’ comes from that Greek
translation and means ‘song.’ Given that a ‘psaltery’ was a stringed instrument, the term
further implied accompaniment on such an instrument. Further, the ‘psalter’ was a
collection of songs to be played with that instrument. The Psalms are often referred to in
the ancient editorial notes of the Psalter as mizmor, while the rabbis called the collection
the Seffir Tehillim, meaning ‘Book of Praises’ (Pierik, p. 1).

As we saw in the passages above, the harp was only one of the number of instruments
David devised for sacred music. Marie Pierik lists a number of stringed, wind, and
percussion instruments mentioned in the Bible and referenced by other ancient sources. In
her out-of-print classic The Psalter in the Temple and the Church, she describes them in
this way:

Among the stringed instruments are the kinnor and nebel. Both are a type of harp, the
former best translated by “cithara,” the Greek lyre. The kinnor is mentioned more
frequently than the nebel in the Bible and is the instrument that David played so
beautifully that “whenever the evil spirit of the Lord was upon Saul, David took his
harp and played with his hand: and Saul was refreshed and was better, for the evil
spirit departed from him.” One variety of harp had ten strings, nebel asor, translated
in the Vulgate “Ten-stringed psaltery.”
 The wind instruments mentioned in the Bible are the ugab, a small pipe or flute; the
halil, a big pipe or flute made of reed or wood. The hasoserah, trumpet, is a straight
thin tube of metal (represented on the Arch of Titus and on Jewish coins of the latter
part of the second Temple). The sofar, native to the Hebrews, originally an ox or
ram’s horn, is mentioned frequently in the later pages of the Bible. It is still used
today, sometimes in metal form, for Jewish high festivals.

The instruments of percussion included the top, tambourine or tumbril, a ring of

wood or metal with a skin stretched over it. It was held in the left hand and shaken in
time to mark the rhythm, whilst the right hand struck the skin. Mariam played on this
instrument to accompany the Canticle of Moses: “So the prophetess Mariam, Aaron’s
sister, took a tambourine in the hand, while all the women went out after her
dancing….” The seselim, cymbals, mentioned in Samuel, 6:5, and Psalm 150, 5,
were shaped from concave pieces of metal, just as they are today. The word
menanaanim, mentioned in the same passage, is sometimes erroneously translated as
sistrum. The word menanaanim is really “castanets” as the repetition of the Hebrew
root nua (“to shake”) shows. (p. 30-31)

Psalms were a masterful art form, both musically and poetically. Next we’ll take a look at
what went into the crafting of a psalm.
The Crafting of the Psalms
There are many notations about the various psalms in the Bible placed there by the
collectors of the Psalms. These inscriptions are not part of the Scripture itself, but belong
to an ancient tradition. These inscriptions do not claim that David wrote all the Psalms, but
seventy-two of them, at least in the Hebrew Masoretic texts of the Bible, contain the
inscription el Dawid, usually translated, “of David.” This could mean that the psalm was
written by David, but it could also mean that it’s about David, of the Davidic collection, or
in the style of David. David is often called the father of the Psalms and their principle
author. According to the Pontifical Biblical Commission, at least those Psalms mentioned
in the New Testament or by Jesus as being written by David should be considered as such
(Pierik, p. 10). The 1910 decree states, “We cannot, in particular, deny the Davidic origin
of the Psalms, which in both the Old and New Testament, are expressly cited as David’s,
especially such as Psalm 2, Why do the nations rage; Psalm 15 (16), Keep me, O God;
Psalm 17 (18), I love you, O Lord, my strength; Psalm 31 (32), Happy is he whose fault is
taken away; Psalm 68 (69), Save me, O God; Psalm 109 (110), The Lord said to my Lord.”

The notations also ascribe eleven psalms to the sons of Korah, twelve to Asaph, two to
Solomon, and even one to Moses. Two Levites by the name of Heman the Ezrahite and
Ethan the Ezrahite are also named as psalmists, while a number of psalms lack attribution.

The sons of Korah, really much later descendants of his, have an interesting history. Their
forefather Korah, grandson of Levi, challenged Moses as a true prophet and leader of the
people and tried to stir up the people against him, saying that Moses was no holier than
anyone else. So God opened the earth under him and he went down to Sheol alive
(Numbers 16:25-34). His descendants learned the lesson, though, by writing beautiful
psalms praising God for his might and blessing his established authority. Second
Chronicles mentions them as a family of temple musicians in an account of a liturgy in the
time of King Jehoshaphat: “Levites from among the Kohathites and Korahites stood up to
sing the praises of the LORD, the God of Israel, their voices ever louder” (2 Chronicles
20:19).

Other notations in the Psalms are more obscure, but scholars have helpful theories about
them. “For the leader” is often taken to mean “for the choir director” but sometimes it’s
taken to mean that it is a psalm for the king. “Do not destroy” is sometimes taken as simply
a warning not to throw out the music, but some take it to mean that the psalm was to be sung
to the melody of a lost song by the title of “Do Not Destroy.” According to Pierik, “on
virgins” may mean for a high-pitched instrument, “on the gittith” may refer to a certain
stringed instrument, while “on the lilies” may refer to a melody by that title (p. 13-14). The
Hebrew selah appears sometimes between sections of a psalm. Its meaning is debated.
While some think it is an expression of praise, others take it to indicate a pause in the
music.

Even today, the sound of Middle Eastern music is very different from traditional Western
music. The ancient psalms were based on a quarter pitch system foreign to traditional
Western music; for example, the black and white keys on a piano rise mostly in half
pitches. Those further intermediate pitches, however, can be found when tightening or
loosening the string of an instrument. Also while melodies in traditional Western music
may vary considerably in pitch, with highs and lows such as in “Amazing Grace,” Middle
Eastern music typically remains within a narrower range (Pierik, p. 39).

While in traditional Western music a happy or light song will be played in a major key and
a sad or ponderous song in a minor key, the ancient psalmists had many different modes to
work with and assigned different psalm themes to different modes. Set rhythms also went
with these modes, unlike with our major and minor keys, which are indifferent to rhythm.
Even certain parts of the Bible had their own musical modes for being chanted in the
synagogue. The five Books of the Law were chanted according to the Pentateuch Mode, the
Prophets were chanted to the Prophetic Mode, the Book of Job to the Mode of Job, and so
forth. Likewise, the Psalms were probably played and sung to various modes now lost to
us but hinted at in some of the ancient notations.

Literary devices were also employed extensively in the crafting of the Psalms. Most
scholars agree that meter and rhyme are not found in the Psalms. Rather than matching
sounds, the psalmists balanced concepts. Psalm 1, whose theme is the difference between
the way of the blessed and the way of the wicked, serves as an introduction to the Psalter
and provides us with good examples of these literary devices.

I will share with you now some of the literary devices in the Psalms that I learned while
taking a graduate class on the Psalms with Dr. John Bergsma at Franciscan University of
Steubenville. Psalm 1 begins with a tricolon, a set of three lines balancing the concept of
the blessed man with three lines elaborating on his conduct. The three lines also slow
down the psalm, giving it a stately opening:

Blessed is the man who does not walk

in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the way of sinners,
nor sit in company with scoffers. (Psalm 1:1)

It then proceeds to a bicolon, a set of two lines with balanced thought. More specifically,
we find a two-line parallelism in which the second line elaborates on and develops on the
first:
 Rather, the law of the LORD is his joy;
and on his law he meditates day and night. (Psalm 1:2)

The use of metaphor, in which one speaks in a symbolic manner, is also common in the
Psalms (i.e. “I am a worm, not a man” [Psalm 22:7]); but in Psalm 1 we find similes,
likening the concept at hand to experiences familiar to contemporaries (i.e. “He is like a
tree planted near streams of water” [v. 3]). Just north of the Dead Sea, the River Jordan
cuts its path through an unforgiving dessert. Trees and all sorts of vegetation thrive along
the banks of the river, but away from those banks, there is only sand and dried-out bushes.
Here the psalmist likens the blessed man to a tree near a stream. Further, the balance here
is called emblematic parallelism, in which the line with the symbol precedes the line that
speaks more plainly:

He is like a tree
planted near streams of water,
that yields its fruit in season;
Its leaves never wither;
whatever he does prospers. (Psalm 1:3)

This is the center point of the psalm. Like an echo, this psalm returns to where it began,
except in terms of the wicked. This structure of continually mirroring the lines back is
called chiasm:

But not so are the wicked, not so!

They are like chaff driven by the wind.

Therefore the wicked will not arise at the judgment,

nor will sinners in the assembly of the just. (Psalm 1:4-5)

Finally, the bicolon concluding the psalm has a different kind of balance called ‘antithetical
parallelism’ comprising of a contrast of the ideas of the two lines:

Because the LORD knows the way of the just,

but the way of the wicked leads to ruin. (Psalm 1:6)

Psalm 2 continues together with Psalm 1 as an introduction to the Psalter. It speaks of the
Davidic kingdom, and ultimately that of the Messiah, emerging by God’s power despite the
hostilities of other kingdoms. One way we know that the two psalms are linked is because
it ends with almost the same line with which Psalm 1 began: “Blessed are all who take
refuge in him!” (Psalm 2:11). This literary device of coming full circle without continually
mirroring the concepts in between is called ‘inclusio.’

Psalm 119 is the longest of all the Psalms. It is written in acrostic form, alphabetically.
Each grouping of eight verses begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet, starting
at the beginning. There are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and 22 times 8 is
176—the exact number of verses in Psalm 119. Thus the psalm is crafted as an elaborate
praise of God’s Law from A to Z, or literally from aleph to taw..
Categorizing the Psalms
Just as prayer can take on many forms, the Psalms can be classified into a number of
different genres. One common genre of psalms recognized by scholars is that of lament,
crying out to God for help. In a psalm of individual lament, the Psalmist cries out to God
for help in the midst of his distress, as in Psalm 4, of David:

Answer me when I call, my saving God.

When troubles hem me in, set me free;
take pity on me, hear my prayer. (Psalm 4:2)

More specifically, penitential psalms are a form of lament psalm that expresses sorrow for
sin. Psalm 32, of David, opens with these words:

Blessed is the one whose fault is removed,

whose sin is forgiven.
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes no guilt,
in whose spirit is no deceit. (Psalm 32:1-2)

Imprecatory psalms are a sub-genre of the lament psalms cursing wicked enemies, which
Christians can take to be the Devil, his minions, or perhaps even the damned as St.
Augustine interprets Psalm 69:

Pour out your wrath upon them;

let the fury of your anger overtake them. (Psalm 69:25)

Psalms of communal lament express the distress of the nation, as in Psalm 79, attributed to
Asaph:

O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance;

they have defiled your holy temple;
they have laid Jerusalem in ruins. (Psalm 79:1)

Some psalms were crafted for liturgies. Of this genre, royal psalms have the Davidic
kingship as their theme. Psalm 72 is attributed to Solomon:

O God, give your judgment to the king;

your justice to the king’s son;
That he may govern your people with justice,
your oppressed with right judgment… (Psalm 72:2)
Wisdom psalms advise on the path of righteousness, as with Psalm 37, of David:

Do not be provoked by evildoers;

do not envy those who do wrong.
Like grass they wither quickly;
like green plants they wilt away. (Psalm 37:1-2)

Psalms of thanksgiving, whether on the part of an individual or the community,

acknowledge God’s gifts, like Psalm 92:

It is good to give thanks to the Lord,

to sing praise to your name, Most High,
To proclaim your love at daybreak,
your faithfulness in the night…. (Psalm 92:2-3)

Hymns are psalms of pure praise to God and represent the purpose of the Psalter, which the
rabbis called Sefer Tehellim, the Book of Praises. Psalms of praise acknowledge the
greatness of God apart from any human need. Psalm 148 begins with Hallelujah, a singular
Hebrew word of praise that has been carried directly into English usage. Hallel is ‘praise,’
and jah refers to Yahweh, the holy name of God as revealed to Moses.

Hallelujah!

Praise the Lord from the heavens;

praise him in the heights.
Praise him, all you his angels;
give praise, all you his hosts.
Praise him, sun and moon;
praise him, all shining stars.
Praise him, highest heavens,
you waters above the heavens.
Let them all praise the LORD’S name;
for he commanded and they were created,
Assigned them their station forever,
set an order that will never change. (Psalm 148:1-6)

All the Biblical collections of the Psalms number 150 total, but there are two different
numbering systems. The more common, and the one used in this book, is from the Hebrew
Masoretic texts. Given that written Hebrew did not originally contain consonants, the
rabbis passed down the intended pronunciation to their students, and when consonants
were developed for written Hebrew, they wrote down the consonants from the oral
tradition in what we call the Masoretic texts. The second numbering system comes from the
Greek Septuagint, which was later carried over into the Latin Vulgate translation. The
contents are the same, but the first major difference is that the Septuagint combines Psalm 9
and 10 into one psalm, numbered as Psalm 9, but then catches up later to make 150 psalms.

Within the Psalter of the Bible, there are five ‘books’ of psalms. These were probably
compiled at some point after the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century BC, since a number
of the psalms include reference to that period in the nation’s history. Symbolically, the
number five represents the five books of the Torah, to which the Psalms were a poetic and
musical response or expression for Israel’s public worship.

These books likely passed through the hands of different compilers and editors, collected
for kings or for Temple use. Before the Exile, including the time of David, the holy name of
God, Yahweh, was commonly used in the language of prayer. After the Exile, rabbis
applied the principle of ‘putting a hedge around the Torah’ to prevent possible occasions of
sin.

To protect the command not to use God’s name in vain, the rabbis taught that no one should
pronounce the name of God except the high priest once a year in the Holy of Holies in the
Temple. So anyone learning to read or chant Torah or any Scriptures was instructed to
substitute the holy name of God for Adonai, translated Lord. In translation, we often come
upon LORD capitalized, which indicates the use of Yahweh in Hebrew, while Lord with
lowercase letters after the capital L indicates the Hebrew Adonai. Further, some editors of
the Psalter likely replaced most instances of Yahweh in the text with Elohim, which is
translated as God. So some segments of the Psalter predominantly use Yahweh while others
have been changed largely in the text itself to Elohim. For example, David’s psalms in the
first book of the Psalter employ the original Yahweh without reservation, while the psalms
of Asaph and the Sons of Korah have a much greater usage of Elohim.

Each book of the Psalter ends with a doxology, a formula of praise to God, since praise is
the ultimate purpose not only of the Psalter, but of creation itself. For example, despite
ending with a lamentation on the sad state of the nation, Psalm 89 concludes the third book
with these words: “Blessed be the Lord forever! Amen and amen!” (Psalm 89:53).
The Psalms: Books I-III
With only a few exceptions, all the psalms of Book I of the Psalter (Psalms 3-41) are
attributed to David. They seem particularly to express the sentiments of his younger days
when he was fleeing from Saul and often found himself in distress. Some of the notations
found above these psalms even reference those times in David’s life. Psalm 22, later
famously quoted by Jesus on the cross, expresses David’s great distress and yet trust in
God:

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

Why so far from my call for help,
from my cries of anguish?

My God, I call by day, but you do not answer;

by night, but I have no relief.

Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;

you are the glory of Israel.

In you our fathers trusted;

they trusted and you rescued them.

To you they cried out and they escaped;

in you they trusted and were not disappointed. (Psalm 22:2-6)

In verse 23 and following, there is a sudden change of events:

Then I will proclaim your name to my brethren;

in the assembly I will praise you:

You who fear the LORD, give praise!

All descendants of Jacob, give honor;
show reverence, all descendants of Israel!

…I will offer praise in the great assembly;

my vows I will fulfill before those who fear him. (Psalm 22:23-24, 26)

Dr. John Bergsma argues that the context of this psalm was the todah, or sacrifice of
thanksgiving prescribed in Leviticus 7. Other psalms, such as Psalm 50, seem to indicate
that this was David’s favorite sacrifice because it emphasized an internal disposition of
thanks and a gesture to flow from it. For David, the sacrifice of animals was the ritual form
that many of the sacrifices took, but what was dearest to God was a heart truly turned to
him.

Unlike the idols of the peoples surrounding Israel, the Lord had no need to be fed. In the
sacrifice of thanksgiving, a person offering thanksgiving to God for deliverance from
distress would bring an ox or sheep to be slaughtered. The animal was not to be turned
completely to smoke for God like the holocaust offering but instead had to be consumed
completely by sundown. No one, of course, could do this alone, so the man would invite
the poor to a chamber in the Temple to share the feast with him. Wine and unleavened
bread were also prescribed for this sacrificial feast, a communion of God and man with the
poor invited to the table. This sacrifice, instituted under Moses and raised to prominence
under David, served as a bridge to the sacrifice of Christ and his New Covenant. Not only
did it emphasize internal disposition, but it also foreshadowed the institution of the
Eucharist.

Book II (Psalms 42-72) continues on the theme of hope amid the trials and distresses that
ensue, but opens more into the refuge and consolation of God, especially within his
Temple. In this collection, we find several psalms of the Sons of Korah, one of Asaph, later
several more of David, and even one of Solomon. The book begins with Psalm 42 from the
Levitical Sons of Korah:

As the deer longs for streams of water,

so my soul longs for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, the living God.

When can I enter and see the face of God?

My tears have been my bread day and night,

as they ask me every day, “Where is your God?”

Those times I recall

as I pour out my soul,
When I would cross over to the shrine of the Mighty One,
to the house of God,
Amid loud cries of thanksgiving,
with the multitude keeping festival.

Why are you downcast, my soul;

why do you groan within me?
 Wait for God, for I shall again praise him,
my savior and my God. (Psalm 42:2-6)

St. Augustine addresses the issue of the voice with which this psalm is to be prayed:

We have undertaken the exposition of a Psalm corresponding to your own longings,

on which we propose to speak to you. For the Psalm itself begins with a certain
pious longing; and he who sings so, says, Like as the hart desires the water-brooks,
so longs my soul after You, O God. Who is it then that says this? It is ourselves, if we
be but willing! And why ask, who it is other than yourself, when it is in your power
to be the thing, which you are asking about? It is not however one individual, but it is
One Body; but Christ’s Body is the Church. (exposition on Psalm 42:1)

The Psalter reaches a high point with Psalm 72, attributed to Solomon, celebrating the
now-established Davidic kingship in idealistic terms that would only be fully realized with
the Messiah:

May he rule from sea to sea,

from the river to the ends of the earth….
Long may he live, receiving gold from Sheba,
prayed for without cease, blessed day by day.
May wheat abound in the land,
flourish even on the mountain heights.
May his fruit be like that of Lebanon,
and flourish in the city like the grasses of the land.
May his name be forever;
as long as the sun, may his name endure.
May the tribes of the earth give blessings with his name;
may all the nations regard him as favored. (Psalm 72:8, 15-17)

Book III of the Psalter (Psalms 73-89) offers the laments of the nation, especially with
regard to the fall of the Davidic kings and the plight of the people in the Exile and beyond.
The theme of the Temple continues. Psalm 89 begins by celebrating the greatness of the
covenant God swore to David, but then takes a dramatic turn to take us to the lowest place
of the Psalter:

But now you have rejected and spurned,

been enraged at your anointed.
You renounced the covenant with your servant,
defiled his crown in the dust.
 You broke down all city walls,
left his strongholds in ruins.
All who pass through seize plunder;
his neighbors deride him.
You have exalted the right hand of his foes,
have gladdened all his enemies.
You turned back his sharp sword,
did not support him in battle.
You brought to an end his splendor,
hurled his throne to the ground.
You cut short the days of his youth,
covered him with shame. (Psalm 89:39-46)

There will be more consolation in Book IV, but it will only be found in the Lord and not in
the grandeur of the Davidic kings.
The Psalms: Books IV & V
Book IV of the Psalter takes solace in God and not in men. It’s like a turning of the page or
the birthing of a new understanding. Repeatedly, the psalmists exhort the people to “sing a
new song.” This book begins with the only Psalm attributed to Moses, Psalm 90, which is
somber but sets the tone for hope. Mankind is weak and fleeting while God is eternal,
enduring forever.

Lord, you have been our refuge

through all generations.
Before the mountains were born,
the earth and the world brought forth,
from eternity to eternity you are God.
You turn humanity back into dust,
saying, “Return, you children of Adam!”
A thousand years in your eyes
are merely a day gone by,
Before a watch passes in the night,
you wash them away;
They sleep,
and in the morning they sprout again like an herb.
In the morning it blooms only to pass away;
in the evening it is wilted and withered. (Psalm 90:1-6)

Some psalms were used in exorcisms to call upon God’s protection against the forces of
evil. Psalm 91 is one such psalm:

You who dwell in the shelter of the Most High,

who abide in the shade of the Almighty,
Say to the LORD, “My refuge and fortress,
my God in whom I trust.”
He will rescue you from the fowler’s snare,
from the destroying plague,
He will shelter you with his pinions,
and under his wings you may take refuge;
his faithfulness is a protecting shield.
You shall not fear the terror of the night
nor the arrow that flies by day,
Nor the pestilence that roams in darkness,
nor the plague that ravages at noon.
Though a thousand fall at your side,
 ten thousand at your right hand,
near you it shall not come.
You need simply watch;
the punishment of the wicked you will see.
Because you have the Lord for your refuge
and have made the Most High your stronghold,
No evil shall befall you,
no affliction come near your tent.
For he commands his angels with regard to you,
to guard you wherever you go.
With their hands they shall support you,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.
You can tread upon the asp and the viper,
trample the lion and the dragon. (Psalm 91:1-13)

Many believers suffer hardships, so what does the Psalmist mean by “near you it shall not
come”? St. Augustine explains,

Were these words addressed to the Head alone? Surely not; surely neither (does it
come near) to Paul, nor Peter, nor all the Apostles, nor all the Martyrs, who failed
not in their torments. What then do the words, it shall not come near, mean? Why
were they thus tortured? The torture came near the flesh, but it did not reach the
region of faith. Their faith then was far beyond the reach of the terrors threatened by
their torturers.... Who will not fear? He who trusts not in himself, but in Christ. But
those who trust in themselves… the devil that is at noon overtook them, the raging
heat of persecution, terrifying with violence; and many fell from the hope of the seat
of judgment, of whom it is said, A thousand shall fall beside you; many too fell from
the hope of reward for their duties, of whom it was said, And ten thousand at your
right hand. But this downfall and devil that is at noon-day shall not come near you,
that is, the Head and the body; for the Lord knows who are His. (exposition on Psalm
91:10)

Book V includes several collections of psalms that were important for Jewish worship and
especially for their religious feasts. The Egyptian Hallel (Psalms 113-118) was prescribed
to be sung at the end of the Passover Seder meal. The hymn that the gospels tell us that
Jesus and his disciples sang after the Last Supper on the way to the Mount of Olives was
probably from the Egyptian Hallel Psalms, assuming that the Last Supper was a Passover
meal (Mark 14:26). Many of these psalms begin or end with a “Hallelujah” and take their
name from the theme of Psalm 114 of praising God for delivering the children of Israel
from Egypt:
 When Israel came forth from Egypt,
the house of Jacob from an alien people,
Judah became God’s sanctuary,
Israel, God’s domain.
The sea saw and fled;
the Jordan turned back.
The mountains skipped like rams;
the hills, like lambs.
Why was it, sea, that you fled?
Jordan, that you turned back?
Mountains, that you skipped like rams?
You hills, like lambs?
Tremble, earth, before the Lord,
before the God of Jacob,
Who turned the rock into pools of water,
flint into a flowing spring. (Psalm 114:1-8)

The Psalms of Ascents (Psalms 120-134) have pilgrimage to Jerusalem as their theme,
ascending to the spiritual heights of God’s holy mountain at Jerusalem. Some scholars think
they were intended for pilgrims making the festivals at Jerusalem, others for Levites
approaching the city for their priestly duties, others for exiles returning from Babylon. Four
are ascribed to David and one to Solomon. The Psalms of Ascent, all focused on going up
to Jerusalem, prepare the disposition of the traveler with enthusiasm for God’s house,
reliance on God, brotherly unity, blessings on the holy city, and repentance from sin. Psalm
122, a Psalm of David, expresses the joy of arriving at the holy city:

I rejoiced when they said to me,

“Let us go to the house of the LORD.”
And now our feet are standing
within your gates, Jerusalem.
Jerusalem, built as a city,
walled round about.
There the tribes go up,
the tribes of the LORD,
As it was decreed for Israel,
to give thanks to the name of the LORD.
There are the thrones of justice,
the thrones of the house of David.
 For the peace of Jerusalem pray:
“May those who love you prosper!
May peace be within your ramparts,
prosperity within your towers.”
For the sake of my brothers and friends I say,
“Peace be with you.”
For the sake of the house of the LORD, our God,
I pray for your good. (Psalm 122:1-9)

At last, Book V concludes the Psalter in high praise to God, putting aside all earthly
concerns in abandon to God’s majesty.

Hallelujah!

Praise God in his holy sanctuary;

give praise in the mighty dome of heaven.
Give praise for his mighty deeds,
praise him for his great majesty.
Give praise with blasts upon the horn,
praise him with harp and lyre.
Give praise with tambourines and dance,
praise him with strings and pipes.
Give praise with crashing cymbals,
praise him with sounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath
give praise to the LORD!
Hallelujah! (Psalm 150:1-6)

All in all, the Psalms are a school of prayer. Their inspired words form hearts that are in
right relation to God. Placed in the mouth of David and following the vicissitudes of his
life and that of the nation, they find their ultimate fulfillment in the mouth of Christ, and
Christians can pray the Psalms in the Spirit of Christ. They echo the Torah, God’s saving
acts in Bible history, and the sentiments of the human heart before God. Thus the Psalms
have played a central role in the liturgies of the Temple, the synagogue, and the church and
also the personal prayer lives of the faithful.
Conclusion
Biblical moral lessons abound in the stories of David. From the stories about the
establishment of the monarchy, we learn that the will of the people is not ultimate since the
people and the nation are under God’s authority. They are not free to disown God or his
laws without consequences for their national life. On the other hand, we find that God is
able to use political structures that are not ideal for good. Even though God was displeased
with the people’s desire for a king, the monarchy became a symbol for God’s own higher
authority and through it came the Messiah. It also led to Israel’s most glorious days under
David and Solomon.

God chose Saul and blessed him. But it was Saul’s callousness towards the Lord that led to
his downfall in his later years. Saul was lukewarm, and when he fell, he didn’t bother to
get up. He was interested primarily in securing the national and dynastic interests whether
with or without God, and worship was a means to his own ends and at times a mere veneer
of propriety. There would be worse kings than Saul, yet God held Saul to a higher
standard, since he was to be the father of the dynasty for the coming ages. Had God not
rejected Saul and his line, perhaps the blind beggar Bartimaeus would have called out to
Jesus, “Have pity on me, son of Saul!” God would have none of this, so the Messiah would
be the son of David.

God himself chose Saul’s successor, and he called him through the prophet Samuel, blessed
and equipped him for the task ahead, and remained with him through the struggles. David
was a man with a mission from God not merely for himself and his line but for all Israel
and indeed for all God’s future people. Mary’s canticle would reflect this theme of God
exalting the humble who are supple to his will:

He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones

but lifted up the lowly. (Luke 1:52)

God is the main protagonist of the story of David, and David is the instrument. David let
God work through him, and God continued his blessings. The Lord initiated a covenant
with David, which would provide a bridge to the new and everlasting covenant to come.
David’s son would be God’s son, and his kingdom would have no end. The Temple, to be
built by David’s son Solomon, would symbolize this covenant and would be the focal point
of true worship as long as it was in existence, and its presence was sorely missed when it
was not. It would be replaced someday by a greater place of true worship—Christ and the
Temple of his Body, which St. Paul later identified as the Church.

Like Saul, David too grew lax and fell. But David was quick to rise, and his heart was
open to God’s correction. David endured and accepted the consequences of his sins for
himself and his family, trusting that God would bring good from it. Redemption would
come from Jesus, his son.

David was complex, conflicted, but ever trusting. He strove for righteousness, repented
from sin, sought deliverance from trials, and offered praise and thanksgiving to God. This
is reflected in the Psalms, both in those attributed to him and those inspired by his struggles
and triumphs, which became inseparable from those of the nation itself.

Beautifully constructed and with sentiments lifted on the wings of God’s Spirit, the Psalms
became the prayers of God’s people, whose hope lay in the promises to the line of David.
Now prayed on the lips of the individual believer and the community of the faithful, they
find their higher spiritual meaning in Christ, as the Church Fathers, such as St. Augustine,
teach. Christ was par excellence the righteous one who suffered evil, the poor one who
sought God with his whole heart, the warrior against the forces of evil, the redeemer of the
repentant, the worthy high priest, and the great prince of justice and peace.

David wrote of the future Christ, his son,

The LORD says to my lord:

“Sit at my right hand, while I make your enemies your footstool.”
The scepter of your might:
the LORD extends your strong scepter from Zion.
Have dominion over your enemies!
Yours is princely power from the day of your birth.
In holy splendor before the daystar,
like dew I begot you.
The LORD has sworn and will not waver:
“You are a priest forever in the manner of Melchizedek.”
At your right hand is the Lord,
who crushes kings on the day of his wrath…
and thus holds high his head. (Psalm 110:1-5, 7)
Please enjoy the first two chapters of Pope Francis: Pastor of Mercy, written by
Michael J. Ruszala, as available from Wyatt North Publishing.
Pope Francis: Pastor of Mercy
Chapter 1
There is something about Pope Francis that captivates and delights people, even people
who hardly know anything about him. He was elected in only two days of the conclave, yet
many who tried their hand at speculating on who the next pope might be barely included
him on their lists. The evening of Wednesday, March 13, 2013, the traditional white smoke
poured out from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel and spread throughout the world by way
of television, Internet, radio, and social media, signaling the beginning of a new papacy.

As the light of day waned from the Eternal City, some 150,000 people gathered watching
intently for any movement behind the curtained door to the loggia of St. Peter’s. A little
after 8:00 p.m., the doors swung open and Cardinal Tauran emerged to pronounce the
traditional and joyous Latin formula to introduce the new Bishop of Rome: “Annuncio
vobis gaudium magnum; habemus papam!” (“I announce to you a great joy: we have a
pope!”) He then announced the new Holy Father’s identity: “Cardinalem Bergoglio...”

The name Bergoglio, stirred up confusion among most of the faithful who flooded the
square that were even more clueless than the television announcers were, who scrambled
to figure out who exactly the new pope was. Pausing briefly, Cardinal Tauran continued by
announcing the name of the new pope: “...qui sibi nomen imposuit Franciscum” (“who
takes for himself the name Francis”). Whoever this man may be, his name choice resonated
with all, and the crowd erupted with jubilant cheers. A few moments passed before the
television announcers and their support teams informed their global audiences that the man
who was about to walk onto the loggia dressed in white was Cardinal Jorge Mario
Bergoglio, age 76, of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

To add to the bewilderment and kindling curiosity, when the new pope stepped out to the
thunderous applause of the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, he did not give the expected papal
gesture of outstretched arms. Instead, he gave only a simple and modest wave. Also, before
giving his first apostolic blessing, he bowed asking the faithful, from the least to the
greatest, to silently pray for him. These acts were only the beginning of many more words
and gestures, such as taking a seat on the bus with the cardinals, refusing a popemobile
with bulletproof glass, and paying his own hotel bill after his election, that would raise
eyebrows among some familiar with papal customs and delight the masses.

Is he making a pointed critique of previous pontificates? Is he simply posturing a persona

to the world at large to make a point? The study of the life of Jorge Mario Bergoglio gives
a clear answer, and the answer is no. This is simply who he is as a man and as a priest.
The example of his thought- provoking gestures flows from his character, his life
experiences, his religious vocation, and his spirituality. This book uncovers the life of the
266th Bishop of Rome, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, also known as Father Jorge, a name he
preferred even while he was an archbishop and cardinal.

What exactly do people find so attractive about Pope Francis? Aldo Cagnoli, a layman
who developed a friendship with the Pope when he was serving as a cardinal, shares the
following: “The greatness of the man, in my humble opinion lies not in building walls or
seeking refuge behind his wisdom and office, but rather in dealing with everyone
judiciously, respectfully, and with humility, being willing to learn at any moment of life;
that is what Father Bergoglio means to me” (as quoted in Ch. 12 of Pope Francis:
Conversations with Jorge Bergoglio, previously published as El Jesuita [The Jesuit]).

At World Youth Day 2013, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, three million young people came out
to celebrate their faith with Pope Francis. Doug Barry, from EWTN’s Life on the Rock,
interviewed youth at the event on what features stood out to them about Pope Francis. The
young people seemed most touched by his authenticity. One young woman from St. Louis
said, “He really knows his audience. He doesn’t just say things to say things... And he is
really sincere and genuine in all that he does.” A friend agreed: “He was looking out into
the crowd and it felt like he was looking at each one of us....” A young man from Canada
weighed in: “You can actually relate to [him]... for example, last night he was talking about
the World Cup and athletes.” A young woman added, “I feel he means what he says... he
practices what he preaches... he states that he’s there for the poor and he actually means it.”

The Holy Spirit guided the College of Cardinals in its election of Pope Francis to meet the
needs of the Church following the historic resignation of Pope Benedict XVI due to old
age. Representing the growth and demographic shift in the Church throughout the world and
especially in the Southern Hemisphere, Pope Francis is the first non-European pope in
almost 1,300 years. He is also the first Jesuit pope. Pope Francis comes with a different
background and set of experiences. Both as archbishop and as pope, his flock knows him
for his humility, ascetic frugality in solidarity with the poor, and closeness. He was born in
Buenos Aires to a family of Italian immigrants, earned a diploma in chemistry, and
followed a priestly vocation in the Jesuit order after an experience of God’s mercy while
receiving the sacrament of Reconciliation. Even though he is known for his smile and
humor, the world also recognizes Pope Francis as a stern figure that stands against the evils
of the world and challenges powerful government officials, when necessary.

The Church he leads is one that has been burdened in the West by the aftermath of sex abuse
scandals and increased secularism. It is also a Church that is experiencing shifting in
numbers out of the West and is being challenged with religious persecution in the Middle
East, Asia, and Africa. The Vatican that Pope Francis has inherited is plagued by cronyism
and scandal. This Holy Father knows, however, that his job is not merely about numbers,
politics, or even success. He steers clear of pessimism knowing that he is the head of
Christ’s Body on earth and works with Christ’s grace. This is the man God has chosen in
these times to lead his flock.
Chapter 2: Early Life in Argentina
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on December 17, 1936, in the Flores district of Buenos
Aires. The district was a countryside locale outside the main city during the nineteenth
century and many rich people in its early days called this place home. By the time Jorge
was born, Flores was incorporated into the city of Buenos Aires and became a middle
class neighborhood. Flores is also the home of the beautiful Romantic-styled Basilica of
San José de Flores, built in 1831, with its dome over the altar, spire over the entrance, and
columns at its facade. It was the Bergoglios’ parish church and had much significance in
Jorge’s life.

Jorge’s father’s family had arrived in Argentina in 1929, immigrating from Piedimonte in
northern Italy. They were not the only ones immigrating to the country. In the late nineteenth
century, Argentina became industrialized and the government promoted immigration from
Europe. During that time, the land prospered and Buenos Aires earned the moniker “Paris
of the South.” In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries waves of immigrants from
Italy, Spain, and other European countries came off ships in the port of Buenos Aires.
Three of Jorge’s great uncles were the first in the family to immigrate to Argentina in 1922
searching for better employment opportunities after World War I. They established a paving
company in Buenos Aires and built a four-story building for their company with the city’s
first elevator. Jorge’s father and paternal grandparents followed the brothers in order to
keep the family together and to escape Mussolini’s fascist regime in Italy. Jorge’s father
and grandfather also helped with the business for a time. His father, Mario, who had been
an accountant for a rail company in Italy, provided similar services for the family business
(Cardinal Bergoglio recalls more on the story of his family’s immigration and his early life
in Ch. 1 of Conversations with Jorge Bergoglio).

Providentially, the Bergoglios were long delayed in liquidating their assets in Italy; this
forced them to miss the ship they planned to sail on, the doomed Pricipessa Mafalda, which
sank off the northern coast of Brazil before reaching Buenos Aires. The family took the
Giulio Cesare instead and arrived safely in Argentina with Jorge’s Grandma Rosa.
Grandma Rosa wore a fur coat stuffed with the money the family brought with them from
Italy. Economic hard times eventually hit Argentina in 1932 and the family’s paving
business went under, but the Bergoglio brothers began anew.

Jorge’s father, Mario, met his mother Regina at Mass in 1934. Regina was born in
Argentina, but her parents were also Italian immigrants. Mario and Regina married the
following year after meeting. Jorge, the eldest of their five children, was born in 1936.
Jorge fondly recalls his mother gathering the children around the radio on Sunday
afternoons to listen to opera and explain the story. A true porteño, as the inhabitants of the
port city of Buenos Aires are called, Jorge liked to play soccer, listen to Latin music, and
dance the tango. Jorge’s paternal grandparents lived around the corner from his home. He
greatly admired his Grandma Rosa, and keeps her written prayer for her grandchildren
with him until this day. Jorge recalls that while his grandparents kept their personal
conversations in Piedmontese, Mario chose mostly to speak Spanish, preferring to look
forward rather than back. Still, Jorge grew up speaking both Italian and Spanish.

Upon entering secondary school at the age of thirteen, his father insisted that Jorge begin
work even though the family, in their modest lifestyle, was not particularly in need of extra
income. Mario Bergoglio wanted to teach the boy the value of work and found several jobs
for him during his adolescent years. Jorge worked in a hosiery factory for several years as
a cleaner and at a desk. When he entered technical school to study food chemistry, Jorge
found a job working in a laboratory. He worked under a woman who always challenged
him to do his work thoroughly. He remembers her, though, with both fondness and sorrow.
Years later, she was kidnapped and murdered along with members of her family because of
her political views during the Dirty War, a conflict in the 1970’s and 80’s between the
military dictatorship and guerrilla fighters in which thousands of Argentineans
disappeared.

Initially unhappy with his father’s decision to make him work, Jorge recalls later in his life
that work was a valuable formative experience for him that taught him responsibility,
realism, and how the world operated. He learned that a person’s self worth often comes
from their work, which led him to become committed later in life to promote a just culture
of work rather than simply encouraging charity or entitlement. He believes that people need
meaningful work in order to thrive. During his boyhood through his priestly ministry, he
experienced the gulf in Argentina between the poor and the well off, which left the poor
having few opportunities for gainful employment.

At the age of twenty-one, Jorge became dangerously ill. He was diagnosed with severe
pneumonia and cysts. Part of his upper right lung was removed, and each day Jorge
endured the pain and discomfort of saline fluid pumped through his chest to clear his
system. Jorge remembers that the only person that was able to comfort him during this time
was a religious sister who had catechized him from childhood, Sister Dolores. She
exposed him to the true meaning of suffering with this simple statement: “You are imitating
Christ.” This stuck with him, and his sufferings during that time served as a crucible for his
character, teaching him how to distinguish what is important in life from what is not. He
was being prepared for what God was calling him to do in life, his vocation.