@booksofsamuel · 86 posts
Priests, prophets, and the first two kings.
Telling the story from the last judge to the first kings of Israel. Nobody knows who wrote 1 and 2 Samuel. They’re named after Samuel because he’s the one who anointed both Saul and David, not because he wrote them: he dies halfway through. Jewish tradition says Samuel started the record and the prophets Nathan and Gad finished it (1 Chronicles 29:29). Whoever it was had sources and a sharp eye for people.
IsraelFirst seen 1 Samuel 1:1
The LORD took this very seriously. Eli’s sons were treating his offerings like they meant nothing.
Someone who worships at Shiloh@shiloh.regular · ShilohCan we talk about Shiloh? The priests there are Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas. You bring your sacrifice, and while it’s boiling their servant sticks a three-pronged fork in your pot. Whatever comes up, they keep. Every time.Replying to @elipriest
They wouldn’t listen to their father.
A man of God brings Eli a message from the LORD. The gist: God honours people who honour him, and people who look down on him get looked down on. And a sign: both his sons will die on the same day.
Back then, hearing from the LORD was rare.
Samuel grows up, and every word he says comes true. From Dan to Beersheba, everyone knows he’s a prophet of the LORD.
Replying to @elder.israel
When the ark comes into camp, Israel shouts so loud the ground shakes.
Israel is beaten. Thirty thousand foot soldiers dead. The ark of God is captured. Hophni and Phinehas are both killed. On the same day.
Replying to @runner.ebenezer
He had led Israel for forty years.
The news brings on Phinehas’s wife’s labour, and it kills her. She names the boy Ichabod, “no glory”. The glory has gone from Israel, because the ark of God has been taken.
The cows go straight up the road to Beth-shemesh, lowing the whole way. Not left. Not right.
A Philistine diviner@diviner.philistiaOur formal advice: place the ark on a new cart, pulled by two cows that have just calved and never worn a yoke, and let them go. Should they head for Israel, it was their God who did this. If not, it was chance.Then some of the men of Beth-shemesh look inside the ark of the LORD, and God strikes down seventy of them. The town mourns.
The ark stays at Kiriath-jearim for twenty years. All Israel mourns, and longs for the LORD.
The Philistines attack while Samuel is still offering the sacrifice. The LORD thunders at them so loud they panic and run.
Replying to @elder.israel
And the LORD tells Samuel: “It isn’t you they’ve rejected. It’s me.”
Early next morning, at the edge of town, Samuel sends the servant on ahead. Then he pours a flask of oil on Saul’s head and kisses him. The LORD has anointed you to lead his people, he tells him.
Replying to @saul
He doesn’t mention the king part.
Replying to @samuel
Saul said nothing.
Wheat harvest, the dry season. Samuel prays, and that day it thunders and pours.
One day Jonathan, Saul’s son, slips out with his armour-bearer towards the Philistine outpost across the pass. He doesn’t tell his father.
Then panic sweeps through the whole Philistine camp. The ground shakes. A panic sent from God.
Samuel never went to see Saul again as long as he lived. But he grieved over him.
The LORD sends Samuel to Bethlehem, to a man called Jesse. Ruth’s grandson.
The book of Ruth@bookofruthObed is the father of Jesse. Jesse is the father of David. David's great-grandmother was from Moab.Jesse’s eldest, Eliab, walks in, and Samuel is sure this is the one. The LORD tells him: don’t look at his looks or his height. People look at the outside. The LORD looks at the heart.
Seven of Jesse’s sons, and the LORD hasn’t chosen any of them. Samuel asks if that’s all of them. There’s still the youngest, Jesse says. He’s out looking after the sheep.
Replying to @booksofsamuel
Samuel won’t let anyone sit down to eat until he’s fetched.
He comes in, red-cheeked, with bright eyes. The LORD says: “That’s the one.” Samuel anoints David in front of his brothers, and the Spirit of the LORD comes powerfully on him from that day on.
The books of Samuel@booksofsamuel · BethlehemSeven of Jesse’s sons, and the LORD hasn’t chosen any of them. Samuel asks if that’s all of them. There’s still the youngest, Jesse says. He’s out looking after the sheep.Replying to @saulscourt
When David plays, Saul feels better.
From that day on, Saul kept a jealous eye on David.
Next morning Jonathan goes out to the field with a young boy to fetch his arrows. He shoots one past the boy and shouts: isn’t the arrow beyond you? Hurry! The boy hasn’t a clue. David, hiding by the stone, knows exactly what it means. Go.
Saul hunts David every day. Jonathan finds him anyway, at Horesh, and helps him find his strength in God. Don’t be afraid, he tells him. My father won’t lay a hand on you. You’ll be king, and I’ll be second to you. Even my father knows it.
Samuel died. All Israel mourned for him, and they buried him at his home in Ramah.
One of the shepherds tells Abigail, Nabal’s wife. She doesn’t wait. Bread, wine, five sheep ready to cook, two hundred fig cakes, all on donkeys, and she rides out to meet four hundred armed men. She doesn’t tell her husband.
When Abigail tells Nabal what happened, his heart gives out and he goes still as a stone. About ten days later the LORD strikes him dead.
Replying to @david
The LORD had put them all into a deep sleep.
The Philistine army is camped at Shunem. Saul sees it and shakes with fear. He asks the LORD. No answer. Not by dreams, not by lots, not by prophets.
Replying to @davidsmen
But David found strength in the LORD his God.
Mount Gilboa. The Philistines kill Jonathan and his brothers. Saul is badly wounded by archers. His armour-bearer is too afraid to kill him, so Saul falls on his own sword. Saul and his three sons die together that day.
The men of Judah come to Hebron and anoint David king over Judah.
Meanwhile Abner, Saul’s army commander, makes Saul’s son Ish-bosheth king over the rest of Israel. Two kings now.
The books of Samuel@booksofsamuel · HebronThe men of Judah come to Hebron and anoint David king over Judah.Replying to @abner
Everyone who reached the spot where Asahel’s body lay just stopped.
The war between Saul’s family and David’s drags on. David grows stronger and stronger. Saul’s family grows weaker and weaker.
Replying to @abner
Ish-bosheth is too afraid of Abner to say another word.
Abner leaves Hebron safely. Then Joab, without David knowing, sends men to bring him back, takes him aside in the gateway as if for a quiet word, and stabs him. Payback for his brother Asahel.
Abner@abner · GibeonJoab’s brother Asahel came after me, fast as a gazelle, and wouldn’t back off. Told him twice to stop. How would I ever look his brother in the eye?Replying to @theisraelites
Seven and a half years in Hebron. Thirty-three in Jerusalem. Forty years in all.
David takes the fortress of Zion anyway. It’s called the City of David now.
A Jebusite on the wall of Jerusalem@jebusite.jerusalem · JerusalemGood luck with that. You’ll never get in here. Even the blind and the lame could keep you out.David grows greater and greater, because the LORD God of armies is with him.
They bring the ark up on a new cart. The oxen stumble, Uzzah reaches out and takes hold of the ark, and God strikes him down there beside it.
Replying to @david
Michal had no children to the day she died.
David reigns over all Israel, and does what is just and right for all his people.
Spring, when kings go out to war. David sends Joab and the whole army. David stays in Jerusalem.
One evening, walking on the palace roof, David sees a woman bathing. He asks who she is: Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. He sends for her, and sleeps with her.
Replying to @booksofsamuel
Some weeks later a message comes to the palace from Bathsheba. I’m pregnant.
David sends to the front for Uriah the Hittite, Bathsheba’s husband. Asks how Joab is, how the troops are, how the war’s going. Then: go home, wash your feet. Uriah sleeps at the palace door with the servants instead.
Replying to @uriah.hittite
David gets him drunk. He still doesn’t go home.
Next morning David writes a letter to Joab and sends it with Uriah: put him at the front where the fighting is fiercest, then pull back so he’s killed.
Replying to @booksofsamuel
Joab puts Uriah where he knows the strongest enemy fighters are. Uriah is killed.
Bathsheba mourns her husband. When the mourning is over, David brings her into his house, and she has his son. But the LORD saw what David had done as evil.
Two years, and Absalom never said one word to his brother Amnon, good or bad. He hated him.
Absalom runs to Geshur and stays three years. David mourns for his son every day, and longs to go to him.
That’s how Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel.
Someone in David’s Jerusalem@cityofdavid.local · JerusalemAbsalom’s got himself a chariot and horses and fifty men running ahead of him. He’s at the city gate early every morning now. Anyone coming to the king for justice, he tells them: your case is good, but the king’s got nobody to hear it. If only I were judge. Try to bow to him and he takes your hand and kisses you.David goes up the Mount of Olives weeping, his head covered, barefoot. Everyone with him covers their heads and weeps as they go.
At the top of the hill, David’s friend Hushai the Archite meets him, robe torn, dust on his head. David sends him back into the city: tell Absalom you’re his man now, and wreck Ahithophel’s advice. Hushai walks into Jerusalem just as Absalom arrives.
Replying to @shimei.son.of.gera
Shimei keeps pace along the hillside, cursing, throwing stones and flinging dust.
Replying to @absalom.council
Absalom goes with Hushai’s advice. The LORD had decided to defeat Ahithophel’s good advice, to bring disaster on Absalom.
The battle spreads through the forest of Ephraim, and the forest takes more lives that day than the sword.
Replying to @soldier.ephraimforest
Joab went to the tree where Absalom was caught, and killed him.
David brings the bones of Saul and Jonathan home from Jabesh and buries them in the tomb of Saul’s father Kish, in Benjamin.
The list of David’s mighty men, and some of the stories behind the names. Pas-dammim: David’s men go out to taunt the Philistines lined up for battle. Then Israel’s army pulls back. Eleazar son of Dodo doesn’t. He stays where he is and keeps fighting. The LORD gave a great victory that day.
Replying to @booksofsamuel
The rest of the army did come back. To strip the dead.
The list of David’s thirty-seven mighty men ends with one name. Uriah the Hittite.
The plague kills seventy thousand people. As the angel reaches out over Jerusalem, the LORD says: “Enough.”
Before this one starts. Saul is Israel’s king, but the LORD has rejected him. Not long ago the prophet Samuel went to Bethlehem and poured oil on the head of Jesse’s youngest son, David, a shepherd. It’s the sign God has chosen him to be king.
The books of Samuel@booksofsamuelHe comes in, red-cheeked, with bright eyes. The LORD says: “That’s the one.” Samuel anoints David in front of his brothers, and the Spirit of the LORD comes powerfully on him from that day on.War again. The Philistines have camped at Socoh in Judah, on one hill. Saul and the army of Israel are on the hill opposite. The Valley of Elah is in between.
Back in Bethlehem, Jesse is an old man now. Eight sons. The three eldest, Eliab, Abinadab and Shammah, have gone to the war with Saul. David is the youngest.
Replying to @elah.frontline
David heard every word of it.
From that day on, Saul kept a jealous eye on David.
Catching up? David is king of all Israel now, ruling from Jerusalem. The Ammonites humiliated his envoys, and it’s turned into a war. It’s spring, the time of year kings go out to fight. David sends Joab and the whole army of Israel. They’re besieging Rabbah, the Ammonite capital. David stays in Jerusalem.
One of David’s envoys to Ammon@envoy.ammonWent to Ammon to comfort the new king over his father’s death. They decided we were spies. Shaved off half of each man’s beard, cut our clothes off at the hips, and sent us home. Mortifying.One evening David gets up from his bed and walks about on the palace roof. From up there he sees a woman bathing.
He sends someone to find out who she is. Word comes back: Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam. Wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of David’s own soldiers, away at Rabbah with the army.
David sends messengers to fetch her to the palace, and he sleeps with her. Then she goes back home.
A message comes to the palace for the king, from Bathsheba. Two words. I’m pregnant.
This is what the letter says. Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then pull back from him, so he’s struck down and dies.
Uriah the Hittite@uriah.hittiteHeading back to the front first thing. The king’s given me a letter to take to Joab.When the time of mourning is over, David has Bathsheba brought to the palace. She becomes his wife.
But the LORD saw what David had done, and it was evil.
After Nathan has gone home, the LORD strikes the child Uriah’s wife had with David, and he becomes ill.
Someone in Gibeah