5 Then all the tribes of
II Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10, is part of segment that extends to verse 11 that is an account of David anointed as king over all Israel and the taking of Jerusalem. This account is significant in that for the first time, Jerusalem becomes part of Israel. It becomes a stronghold called the City of David, for his private army defeated the Jebusites, who had been in control of the city. In this way, the city did not belong to either the northern or the southern tribes.
II Samuel 5:1-5 is the account of the anointing of David as king over all Israel. 1Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron, and said, “Look, we are your bone and flesh. The loss of Abner and Ishbaal frightens the people of the north. The Philistines had just killed Saul in I Samuel 31. They are still active, and Israel needs a war leader. 2 For some time, while Saul was king over us, you led out Israel and brought it in. They acknowledge the leadership of David in war, even when Saul was king, for which see I Samuel 18:5-19:10. The LORD said to you: It is you who shall be shepherd of my people Israel, you who shall be ruler over Israel.” We have no record of this statement in the Bible other than this statement. However, Jonathan in I Samuel 24:4, the men of David in I Samuel 24:4, and Abigail in I Samuel 25:28-31 also refer to the Lord making promises to David. 3 So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron; showing they need him, and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the LORD, and they anointed David king over Israel. Verses 4-5 offer a summary of the kingship of David that conforms to the summarizing formulas in the Book of Kings. 4 David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. He would have been 37. 5 At Hebron, he reigned over Judah seven years and six months; and at Jerusalem, he reigned over all Israel and Judah thirty-three years, or from about 1000-960 BC. Seven years earlier, the kingdom of Judah offered itself to the leadership of David, and now the northern tribes of Israel offer themselves to his leadership. All of this happens without effort on the part of David. I Chronicles 12:23-40 offers a list of the twelve tribal groups that rallied to David at Hebron. The total number, 340,822, is an enormous number that traveled from afar in order ot demonstrate support for him. The largest contingents are from the most distant regions, indicating complete and far-reaching support for David. The text says they are as vast as the army of God and that they gather in accord with the word of the Lord. They were with David three days, eating and drinking. For their fellow citizens had provided for them, using ass, camel, mule, and ox, bringing flour, cakes of figs, raisin cakes, wine, oil, cattle, and sheep in abundance for there was joy in Israel.
II Samuel 5:9-10, part of a segment embracing 6-12, deals with Jerusalem. David quickly moves to consolidate his power. The Jebusite control of Jerusalem divided the tribes of Israel from the southern tribes of Judah. In verses 9-10, 9David occupied the stronghold, and named it the city of David. David built the city all around from the Millo inward.David carried out a building project, but the city belongs to David because he captured. David makes Jerusalem his capital due to its central location between Judah and Israel and because it was neutral territory. 10 David became greater and greater. Isn't it a little off-putting to desire to become great? But why should it be? Certainly, we would not want to confess to being mediocre, right? The key for David was that he was assisted in the process of maturing from good to great. He had help, for the LORD, the God of hosts (the heavenly armies), was with him. Regardless of the successes, the text wants us to know the source of the success is that the Lord was with him. One could review the life of David to find secrets to his greatness. Possibilities: a soul that was sensitive to the Spirit, a teachable spirit, and the willingness to confess and repent.
Yes, the Lord was with David. We need to remember, however, that David would have many epic failures. He failed to discipline his son, Absalom, which led to Civil War. He failed with Bathsheba, breaking the commandments related to coveting, adultery, and murder.
David had tragic flaws. As a literary device, David as a leading heroic character in the drama of early Israelite sacral kingship had a trait that would lead to his downfall. His lack of self-knowledge, lack of judgment, and even pride, led to his epic fail within his family. The Greek word for tragic flaw is hamartia or hamartanein, which means, "to err." Aristotle introduced this term first in his book Poetics, and his idea was that a fatal flaw is an "error of judgment" on the part of a hero that brings his downfall. A tragic flaw is also a "fatal flaw" in literature and films, which is a defective trait in the character of the hero.
Oedipus Rex (by Sophocles) is a play where Oedipus is a perfect example of having a tragic flaw in this famous Greek tragedy. The cause of his downfall was his inadvertent wrongdoings. The hubris of Oedipus is the cause that made him disobey the prophecy of the gods. Ironically, he ended up doing what he feared the most, such that he became an abhorrence to the gods, in his own words.
Hamlet (by William Shakespeare) is a play where the tragic flaw in Hamlet determines his downfall at the end of the play. His tragic flaw is his indecisiveness, which is due to grave thinking on the topic of whether vengeance is wrong or right, and whether to kill his father's murderer or not. In the course of time, his relationship with his mother is spoiled, and Ophelia commits suicide. He reveals this indecisiveness in [the "to be or not to be" soliloquy].
Dr. Faustus (by Christopher Marlowe), in which the character of Dr. Faustus is also one of the best examples of tragic flaw. The tragic flaw of Dr. Faustus is his ambitious nature to learn. He made a contract with Lucifer and sold his soul in this connection. Finally, his soul is taken to hell, and then he realizes his sin and repents but it was too late.
Tragic flaw in literature has a moral purpose. The point is to encourage the audience to improve their characters and remove the flaws that could bring their downfall in life. The readers and the audience can identify themselves with the tragic hero, since it imparts feelings of pity and fear among them, thereby completing their catharsis -- or in other words, the play helps purge them of bad emotions. Therefore, they can learn a moral lesson so that they might not indulge in similar actions in future.
David and the leaders of Israel and Judah sealed a covenant. Any time two parties enter this kind of arrangement, the implication is that the parties have freely entered agreement, and they may freely negate the covenant. Israel will learn its greatest lessons through its failure and struggle. It will divide into two kingdoms due to abuse of power. It will fail to offer loyalty to the Lord by combining worship of the Lord with other gods. Its history becomes a record of the king and the people breaking the Ten Commandments. The result was the loss of temple, city, king and land in the Babylonian exile. Yes, they will return and rebuild the temple, but except for a brief period, they will be simply a small province within the Persian, Greek, and Roman empires. The Romans will destroy another temple in 70 AD.
I think it often true that as nations and as individuals, we learn our greatest lessons through failure and struggle.
The Declaration of Independence is the part of the founding documents of America and contains part of our covenant with each other. Independence Day celebrates the most important ideas ever expressed about government and the actions that embody them and make them live. Thomas Jefferson put them on paper in 1776. It took him two weeks. Congress considered, discussed and debated the paper for several days and struck out Jefferson's denunciations of slavery and the slave trade, which would haunt and bleed the nation in time to come. Jefferson said it was on the evening of July 4 that all except one agreed to it. It listed the abuses of King George III, while at the same time setting forth the principles of proper government:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
The same day, Patrick Henry delivered a famous speech to the Virginian legislature. He began by commenting on the need for civility, even for those with whom he disagreed on the matter of separating from England. Yet, it was a courageous civility, for he boldly put forth his reasons for declaring independence. It courageously and famously ended, “As for me, give me liberty or give me death.”
That powerful dream of liberty is still frightening tyrants and giving hope. The concepts of basic human rights and limited government, with the consent of the governed, expressed so clearly and forceful, also find their embodiment in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Yes, the American covenant affirms that God created all persons with the rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Yet, the failure to extend such rights to all persons with the existence of slavery led to Civil War and eventually the Civil Rights movement. This birth defect in America is one with America continues to struggle.
In the period between the formation of the constitution in 1787 and the Civil War in 1861, slavery received the backing of the courts. A particularly horrific decision was the case of Celia, a 19-year-old slave woman who killed her much older Missouri master in 1855 after he had been sexually exploiting her for five years, since buying her at age 14. When he tried to force himself on her, after she protested that she was already pregnant, she whacked him with a stick and burned his body. She was condemned to hang, the local court effectively deciding that a slave had no right to prevent a master from raping her. Missouri’s Supreme Court declined to intervene. Celia’s execution for trying to defend herself from a beast was just two years before the far more infamous Dred Scott case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court, 7–2, effectively ruled against any restrictions on slavery and decreed that black people, even if free, had no rights to citizenship. President James Buchanan, alongside much of America, celebrated that the decision supposedly put to rest the slavery issue.[1]
We could list other failures, of course. The Great Depression was one. The failure to keep a strong military that led to two world wars was a hard and costly lesson. The failure to use properly the Goliath type of economic and military power America has in the world has led to great cost in lives and financial resources. America is at its best when it practices the moral virtue of liberty that it preaches, whether in its political or economic sense.
In John Wesley's sermon on “The Reformation of Manners," he expressed concern that the church had fallen away from its high calling. He defines that church as that group of people who have entered a covenant with each other. The first purpose of entering this covenant is to save your own soul. The second purpose is to assist each other in working out your own salvation. The third purpose is “to save all people from present and future misery, to overturn the kingdom of Satan, and set up the kingdom of Christ." He wonders if too many people of the church have actually become part of the world. Wesley is also concerned about the state of his nation. He urges the church to become a society that could reform the nation. England then and America now are not Christian nations. Yet, because God cares about the people of God, God cares about the nations in which they live. Thus, the people of God need to believe that such reform is the work of God. They must be people of faith, courage, patience, and perseverance. Significantly, for our time, the church, of all persons, must realize that the anger of human beings does not advance the righteousness that God seeks.
I have suggested the importance of failure and struggle in our learning. What does it mean to fail? When Michael Jordan quit basketball and started playing professional baseball, a reporter asked him what would happen if it did not work. "I am not afraid to fail," was his response. Most of us can agree with the thought that that it is better to dare mighty things and to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to put oneself with people who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they know neither victory nor defeat.[2]
An important part of Christian discipleship is perseverance. We stick with something to the end. We can experience grace in that virtue. Yet, we can also experience grace in admitting the end has come to a project and let go of it. We must not admit failure easily. Yet, it takes come courage to admit that the time has come to shake the dust of our shoes and move on to the next project of our lives. Admitting failure may be the most loving think we can do. In fact, we let go, God may come in a new and unexpected way. The good teacher has the reward of the excited student and the disappointment of the student the teacher cannot help. The good parent does all he or she can do for the children but may also have to learn to let them fail and let them go without feeling totally responsible for their lives. We learn to get back on our feet. We learn to take a break, realizing that failure is not the end of the world. In our break, we can gain perspective. We learn to find a friend with whom we can talk. Too easily, we can lose ourselves in our thoughts, making the failure larger than it is. A friend can help us gain perspective.
In the movie "A River Runs Through It," there is the story of a parsonage family in Montana. It is a happy family. The younger son veers from the family values, incurring gambling debts in a happy go lucky style of life. One drunken brother-in-law sadly said, "Why do some people who need help, not receive it?" Shortly before his own death, the father speaks these words in a sermon: "Each one of us at one time in our lives looks upon a loved one with need and asks the same question, 'We are willing to help, Lord, but what if anything is needed?' For it is true, we can seldom help those we live with. Either we do not know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we want to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them. We can love completely without complete understanding."
There comes a time when we need to say: "There, I've done all I can do. Now, let God take you." That is what God is waiting for us to do. We are the ones who need to stop trying to make people do what we want or manipulate situations to come out the way we want. We can then entrust them into the hands of a loving God. Then, God can go to work.
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