So we reach 2 Samuel’s last chapters; and there’s a huge, worship-inspiring amount for us here, as we’ll see.
But the first thing that may strike us is they are seriously `out of place`! Ch22 is David’s song summarizing his life; the first few verses of ch23, his `last words`. But now come nearly two more chapters. What is so important here that they are pulled right out of sequence?
Several things. Let’s pick up from 23:1-7, David’s `last words`. v2 is a surprise: God has used David to voice more Scripture than any predecessor but Moses, but here he says he’s unusually aware that `The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me; His word was on my tongue.` What is he saying that’s so important? Surely this makes us read the next verse as messianic: `‘When One rules over people in righteousness, when He rules in the fear of God, He is like the light of morning, at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth.’ (Our country needs that!!) The true ruler blesses his people; alas, we’ll see how different are the ruinous consequences of David’s rule in the next chapter, with which 2 Samuel closes. Insofar as 2 Samuel, or 2 Kings as the Latin Bible calls it, is a book about leadership, this is crucial: only Messiah can be the totally flawless leader Israel, or anyone else, needs; something we need to remember, be honest about and plan around…
Then in v5 David’s mind goes back to all God promised in the vital ch7, and he sees: God is keeping His covenant with David’s future house (family), just as He promised there. But this too is about the grace so much needed by any leader (as ch24 will also be). The meaning here is unclear – some take it as `Although my house is not like this with God [David knows his failures], yet He has made with me an everlasting covenant…`; others, `Is not my house right with God?` (because of the forgiveness he has experienced). Either way, as the leader looks back (and as we do too), everything good in our lives has resulted from God’s forgiving grace (`the God of Jacob`, another famous sinner, as David calls Him, v1). Hallelujah!- and this means that that same grace will guarantee his, and my, our, future: `Will He not bring to fruition my salvation, and grant me my every desire?`(v5). Indeed He will; thank you Lord!
But then the last two verses of this final, especially Spirit-inspired, utterance, are a bit surprising. They’re about judgment: `But evil men are all to be cast aside like thorns…` Dale Ralph Davis’ fine commentary notes that, jarring though this might seem to us, Isaiah’s wonderful prophecy finishes likewise, with a verse that Jesus (Mark 9) tied in with hell. Why finish with that? Surely because we’re learning that our lives can only work because of His grace; but then, we must never fall (as western Christians too often do) into thinking that, because of grace, sin, personal evil, and rebellion don’t matter. They do, enormously; and both David and Isaiah were inspired by the Spirit to emphasise that in their absolutely last utterance… Lord, please help me not to lose this…
But then fourthly what? The rest of ch23 is a celebration of the remarkable leaders David had alongside him. And if this is a leadership manual for us, this is crucial too. David’s reign saw Israel raised to a glory never equalled before or after, and the foundations laid for the building of the temple that is the zenith of the old testament; but this was surely not achieved by David’s gifts alone, but by those of many others. Practically, any good leader needs to remember that about anything they’ve achieved, and to thank God for all who have made it happen. (It’s striking too that in 2 Samuel’s last account of David at war, when his men remove the last of the giant Rephaim [apparently the same as the Nephilim (Num 13:33, Deut 2:11); demonic mutants?], David’s life is only saved by the intervention of the morally dubious Abishai (21:17).) A reminder that any leader needs to be humble…
And the book’s final chapter, ch 24, taken way out of sequence for emphasis as it is, really underlines this. Ch24 closes the history of David’s kingship with how his leadership brought catastrophe on his people, 70,000 of whom died as a result. There are lots of questions this chapter leaves unanswered. God’s anger burns against Israel, we read (v1): why?- because of how they’d rebelled with Absalom, then Sheba, against David? And then: God causes David to number the fighting men he has available – but as 1 Chronicles 21 explains, it was Satan directly who made this happen, tempting David into actions that precipitated God’s judgment. In one sense God in His deliberate permissive will caused it, but what we have here is like Job 1 (or 2 Cor 12:7-9 come to that): God making use even of Satan’s desire to destroy, for discipline and for ultimate good.
But why was David numbering the people so wrong? Was it an act we too need to be warned by, an act of disastrously proud self-sufficiency? (I’m reminded how God kept cutting away Gideon’s [numerical] strength in Judges 7 till he was utterly dependent on Him; does that explain similar things that sometimes happen to us?) In counting up his human resources, was David turning his mind away from the reality that (23:1) his real resource was nothing more than being a `man exalted by the Most High`? Thinking about it, might we too often do the same? Anyway Joab knew from the start that this enterprise was sinful (1 Chron 21:3). And though (like in the Bathsheba affair) it was a whole nine months before clarity and judgment came, come they did.
But is there a bigger reason why `the Spirit of the Lord` chose to pull this incident out of sequence and make it the final history of the book? There is. God’s judgment comes to an end here first because of God’s grace holding it back (v16); but it finally ends when a sacrifice is offered in a place God specifically commands (vv18,25). This place (1 Chron 22:1, 2 Chron 3:1) was mount Moriah; and there the temple would be built teaching all subsequent generations that `without the shedding of [sacrificial] blood there is no forgiveness’ (Heb 9:22). It was the place too where Abraham’s life came to climax in the sacrifice of Isaac, when God provided a lamb as a substitute in Isaac’s place (Gen 22:8). This is where David would give the first commands for the temple to be built…
And how different the mood is as he does so to ch7, when, relaxing triumphant in his cedar palace, David first had the idea to build a house for the Lord (and was stopped by Him). Here, the foundations of the place of God’s worship are very different: David seeing his own disastrous sin and folly, the reality of judgment, and God’s even greater mercy triumphing over judgment, because of sacrifice. Just as in Genesis 22, judgment here (the destroying angel, v16) stopped just in the place of atonement. It’s not hard for us to put all this together, is it: it’s above all at the cross, the place of atoning sacrifice where God’s unutterable mercy absorbed our judgment – it’s here above all that we worship! This is why it’s the culminating chapter!
Plenty enough there to turn into practical prayer and to worship? Yet let me flag up one last vital lesson that we learn through this chapter being what closes off 2 Samuel; another to turn into worship! What this tells us again is that, in the end, no one can fully play the part of the true Leader we need, except Jesus Himself. We see this lesson so many times in the old testament. In Genesis, God uses Joseph to deliver both Israel and Egypt from famine; but in the book’s last verse he’s dead, and the Bible’s next book begins with him forgotten and Israel in slavery as a result. Moses rescues Israel even more effectively, but when Deuteronomy ends he has failed to bring the people into the promised land. Judges tells of many God-gifted deliverers, but none can arrest the collapse into the vicious anarchy of the terrible final chapters. In 1 Samuel, Saul is, as kings go, not a bad candidate (eg 11:13,14:47-48); but he turns into a disaster, & in the book’s last chapter he’s killed and Israel are driven out of their land by the godless Philistines. David is an even better king; but 2 Samuel’s last chapter shows him lapsing into conceited folly utterly destructive of the nation. And then Solomon, the wisest king Israel would ever have, died leaving a situation where the kingdom would be torn permanently into two pieces. All human leaders (including elders and pastors) will fail sometimes; ultimately nothing short of a Leader from heaven will meet our needs. And we have One! But only He can always be the Leader we so badly need; only Jesus will carry us – and anyone we lead, or parent – right through…
So even as we seek to grow through 2 Samuel in learning how godly leadership works, we can each thank God (and especially when we’re leaders, or parents!): there is Someone else around – Someone in charge, who does this far better than me! (I am so very grateful for that!!)
PS And one last, thought-provoking verse to meditate on from 2 Samuel’s close; what does this say to me?: `I will not offer offerings to the Lord that cost me nothing` (24:24)…
