2 Samuel Lesson 52
David Controls Jerusalem – 2 Samuel 5
2 Samuel 5 is a continuation of the section that runs from chapter 2-7;
it’s God establishing the base of David’s kingdom. God’s establishment of this kingdom, and as we
have pointed out innumerable times, this actually provides you with a political
handbook on how God the Holy Spirit operates in the political domain. Chapters 2-4 deal with how God gives David
control over the twelve tribes.
Obviously as king you need somebody to rule over and there are going to
be twelve tribes over which David rules. All these tribes have been
successfully brought to him, and I emphasize “brought” to him. David did not conquer them, David did not
have some human viewpoint gimmick that he used to maneuver them into some sort
of position. These tribes were given to him by God’s grace.
Now in chapter 5 we have one further plank in this platform for his
kingdom. He has the twelve tribes and by
the end of chapter 5 he will control a very, very key section of real estate.
The center of
Chapter 5 is the story of how David captured
Let’s look at 5:1-3, here is David’s claim to the throne. This is how the results of chapters 2-4
played out in actual political experience.
“Then came all the tribes of
Now three things are going to be said of David’s right to rule
here. It’s interesting to see how the
Lord worked it out and David attained this control. The first point in verse 1 is that it is an
organic union. Now that’s the proper
Biblical position; there’s no such thing as race, there are families in the
Bible, no bigger division socially than the family. The fourth divine institution is not a social
division, it’s a function. So you have
family going across the face of the earth and spreading out, and here you have
one family by the name of Jacob, and his other name is
Now in the second verse, “Also in time past,” here’s the second reason
for their recognition of David’s right to rule, “when Saul was king over us,
thou,” and in the Hebrew the construction “thou” is emphasized; it’s emphasized
twice in verse 2 so we know the Holy Spirit’s objective in writing this is to
point out David’s role under Saul.
“…thou wast he who led us out and brought us in Israel;” and this means
David was the functioning leader under Saul, that though Saul was actually in
position the leader, the man who was visible on the political and military
horizon always was David, at least in the early years, then they had the
falling out. But earlier it was David
who was the recognized hero. So the
second point they’re making is not only is David part of the organic family of
David, but David is also a national hero that is widely recognized. And finally the third point and the strongest
one, “and the LORD said to you,” that’s through Samuel the prophet, here’s the
prophetic designation, “the LORD said to you, You shall feed My people, Israel,
and thou shalt be a captain over Israel.”
“You shall feed My people,” now it’s a very interesting point here
because the word for “shepherd” and the word for “captain” look much the same,
it’s sort of a pun. The word for captain
is nagad, n-g-d, and the word that’s
used for shepherd, nagaq, n-g-q or n-g-k if you want to be phonetic about
it, and it’s a play on words. And it
refers to David’s role as the greater shepherd or the ideal king. “You shall feed my people,” you will pasture
them, “and shall be a nagad over
them. The word “nagad” is a word that is used in the Bible, eleven times, and it’s
used for David.
So obviously it’s a very important term and in 7:8 you see how very,
very closely it’s related to a shepherd.
“Now, therefore, so shall thou say unto my servant, David, Thus saith
the LORD of hosts, I took thee from the sheepcote, from following the sheep, to
be ruler over my people, over
“Thou shall feed my people,” now this is a commission given to him by
the prophet and that third final qualification was recognized by the people; it
is the prophetic qualification, who makes the king in
Verse 3, “So all the elders of
Listen to what happened, this is Josephus, his account of this based on
both the Bible and report of the events that were current in his day: When
these things were brought to this conclusion, all the principal men of the
Hebrew people came to David to Hebron, with the heads of thousands, and other
rulers, and delivered themselves up to him, putting him in mind of the
good-will they had borne to him in Saul's lifetime, and the respect they then
had not ceased to pay him when he was captain of a thousand, as also that he
was chosen of God by Samuel the prophet, he and his sons; and declaring besides, how God had given him power
to save the land of the Hebrews, and to overcome the Philistines. Whereupon he
received kindly this their alacrity on his account; and exhorted them to
continue in it, for that they should have no reason to repent of being thus
disposed to him. So when he had feasted them, and treated them kindly, he sent
them out to bring all the people to him; upon which came to him about six
thousand and eight hundred armed men of the tribe of Judah, who bare shields
and spears for their weapons…. There came also seven thousand and one hundred
out of the tribe of Simeon. Out of the tribe of Levi came four thousand and
seven hundred, having Jehoiada for their leader. After these came Zadok the
high priest, with twenty-two captains of his kindred. Out of the tribe of
Benjamin the armed men were four thousand; but the rest of the tribe continued,
still expecting that some one of the house of Saul should reign over them.
Those of the tribe of Ephraim were twenty thousand and eight hundred, and these
mighty men of valor, and eminent for their strength. Out of the half tribe of
Manasseh came eighteen thousand, of the most potent men. Out of the tribe of
Issachar came two hundred, who foreknew what was to come hereafter, but of armed men twenty thousand. Of the tribe of
Zebulon fifty thousand chosen men. This was the only tribe that came
universally in to David, and all these had the same weapons with the tribe of
Gad. Out of the tribe of Naphtali the eminent men and rulers were one
thousand,” and it goes on to relate tribe by tribe. “… whose weapons were
shields and spears, and the tribe itself followed after, being (in a manner)
innumerable [thirty-seven thousand]. Out of the tribe of Dan there were of
chosen men twenty-seven thousand and six hundred. Out of the tribe of Asher
were forty thousand. Out of the two tribes that were beyond Jordan, and the
rest of the tribe of Manasseh, such as used shields, and spears, and
head-pieces, and swords, were a hundred and twenty thousand. The rest of the
tribes also made use of swords. This multitude came together to Hebron to
David, with a great quantity of corn, and wine, and all other sorts of food,
and established David in his kingdom with one consent. And when the people had
rejoiced for three days in Hebron, David and all the people removed and came to
Jerusalem.”]
Why is this important? It shows
you David still doesn’t have total control, he has majority control, he has the
control that counts. There are a lot of
holdouts, people who still are looking for some person in Saul’s household. So David makes the treaty, and then we have a
listing in this chapter of the things that God gave him.
Verses 4-5, summary of his reign, that is put in this chapter at this
point to prove that what happens to covenant in verse 3 was never again broken.
In other words, the reign, once
established in verse 3 would go on and on and on, and it just is a testimony to
historic continuity and God’s faithfulness.
[“David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned
forty years. [5] In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months;
and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty and three years over all Israel and Judah.”]
Now in verses 6-10 we have the first great significant undertaking of
David as king over the united tribes, and that is the capture of Fort Zion, if
you want to call it that, because that’s exactly what the Hebrew word means,
“fort” or “stronghold.” Now why is this
stronghold important? One, the geographical
terrain; two, Zion is in between north and south Israel; Zion, based on its
location; here’s the north end of the Dead Sea, here’s Jerusalem and you have
this tremendous drop off in the south and south east part of the city. To the north it’s very flat. Now just around on the very south end was the
old original area called Mount Zion. And
it’s that area that is going to, in the future, become the world capital during
the millennium. Mount Zion is a
stronghold in verse 6 of the Jebusites.
And the Jebusites do a very silly thing; the Jebusites rest in their own
security; they have an impregnable fortress, they think.
Verse 6, “And the king and his men went to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites,
the inhabitants of the land, who spoke unto David, saying,” and this is a
sarcasm, remember the Jebusites are considered to be part of the Canaanites,
“Unless you take away the blind and the lane, you shall not come in here,
thinking, David cannot come in here.”
The idea was, as history goes, they took all the lame people of the city
and the blind, now we’re not sure whether that was a literal blindness or
whether this was a priestly cult that the Jebusites practiced where they
actually punched the eyes out of various people in their religious cults; this
has occurred in various languages so it could be true. But whatever it was,
they had these people all upon the wall looking down at David, and they were
all blind and lame, and they just let them sit there on the wall, and it was
ridiculing them, come on up David, try it.
These people can defend this city, there’s not way you can get in.
Verse 7, “Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion; the city of
David,” the Holy Spirit doesn’t even tell us how, He hints at in several ways,
the best guess is he discovered a little spring and his soldiers wormed their
way, in a very secret maneuver up inside the walls of the fortress, but somehow
he got there; the summary statement is given in verse 7, details to follow in
verse 8. “And David said on that day,
Whosoever gets up to the gutter [water shaft], and smites the Jebusites, and
the lame and the blind, who are hated
of David’s soul, he shall be chief and
captain. [Wherefore, they said, the blind and the lame shall not come into
the house.]” Now if you have an old King
James translation you’ll see that that whole phrase is in italics. And you say
why is that in italics. What right does
the translator have to supply that. Turn
to 1 Chronicles 11:6, parallel passage, here’s where it comes from.
Now a word of explanation about Chronicles: we are studying, actually in
your English Bible it’s four books hooked together at this point, in the Hebrew
it’s two; Samuel and Kings. Those books
were written before and during the exile.
These books were kind of a post mortem analysis of why Israel collapsed
and so it gives a psychological and spiritual insight into how the nation
thought and what happened spiritually and why it was destroyed. But after the exile in 518, and the Jewish people
came back, the priests got together and wrote 1 and 2 Chronicles. 1 and 2 Chronicles summarize their history
and there are many, many passages in Chronicles that were taken from Samuel and
Kings. The manuscripts behind Samuel and
Kings are far, far older than Chronicles; these manuscripts had to be taken
during the exile, in fact, they suffered.
In fact, the manuscript of Samuel is so bad that somebody’s theory is
that worms ate the parchment, it’s a very seriously considered theory because
you can’t explain why the text is in such a mess. It’s very bad. And these passages are lifted out of here and
repeated, and here’s the Holy Spirit taking care of these phrases and here it
is in verse 6, “And David said, Whosoever smites the Jebusites first shall be
chief and captain. So Joab, the son of
Zeruiah, went up first, and was chief.”
This is how the got to be commander in chief.
Back to 2 Samuel, in verse 9, “So David dwelt in a the fort, and called
it the city of David.” Now that’s
historically where Jerusalem gets it’s name, David conquered it. “And David built round about from Millo and
inward.” Millo is a fortress that most
scholars believe is to the north. In
other words, what he did, he had a hill and it was a very sharp drop off, and
he didn’t have to worry about that part, he had to worry about an army coming
from the north. Jerusalem has always had
to worry about that, and so he built lines of fortification around here and
walled in the city. Verse 10, “And David
went on, and grew great, and the LORD God of hosts was with him.” That’s a summary statement showing the rise
of David.
Verses 11-12, besides gaining the tribes through a covenant, besides
gaining the city, now he gains a palace.
Verse 11 is a very interesting piece of the Bible as far as architecture
is concerned because here David is using human viewpoint craftsman, and you say
wait a minute, isn’t this a compromise.
Not at all; the Bible says that all men can be creative, but they have
to be creative when controlled by the Word. David is going to use resources from
a pagan nation to construct his palace.
“And Hiram, king of Tyre,” he had the best craftsman working for him, so
when David decided he was going to build a palace he was going to get the best
people to do it. They built it according
to David’s dictation, but nevertheless the materials came from a pagan
nation. “Hiram, king of Tyre, sent messengers to David, and cedar trees,
and carpenters, and masons; and they build David an house.”
Verse 12, “And David perceived that the LORD had established him king
over Israel.” How did David perceive
this? David had a series of promises for
his life; now there are two things that coalesce in David’s life at this point. Number one, he has the promises given to him
by Samuel the prophet. These had been
given to him many, many years ago; these were the promises he built his whole
life on during the persecution phase.
The Psalms are his struggle and they depict the persecution phase of his
life and all during that David had nothing except the promises to rely upon. Now he has experience, but please notice, the
experience scores only after you have promises believed. How do you know which experience is valid and
which experience is not? Only when you
have promises to identify the true experiences from the false experiences. Now that’s where many Christians, and
probably many of you, are out of bounds, because you are deciding what God is
doing in your life strictly on the basis of experience. The Bible does not condone this kind of thing
and if you continue to do this kind of thing you are going to be in big
trouble. You operate on the basis of the
Word of God plus experience; always the promises interpret experience for you.
If you want an illustration: how could Israel have distinguished true Messiah
from false Messiah. Only by whether the
true of false Messiah fit the promises.
So it was the promises of the Old Testament that clarified the true
Jesus and the false Jesus.
Now in verse 12 David now establishes himself, he sees that God has
established him because of experience applied to the promises, “and that he had
exalted his kingdom for his people Israel’s sake,” that is the reason and I
want you to notice that there is no false human viewpoint hero worship in the
Bible. Here the entire story is grounded
on the fact of God’s covenant with his people, that’s why. Application to the Christian life: you and I
are never going to be (quote) “heroes” (end quote). Whatever God admires in our lives is going to
be there because of His plan in Christ, and because of that plan in Christ He
is pleased. And the same principle here,
David is blessed, not because David is a hero. David is blessed because of
God’s sovereign plan for the nation Israel.
Now verses 13-16, David’s polygamy again, we always have to go through
this because in that day and age the sign of the harem was a sign of
blessing. Now you can imagine what it
must have been like living with all these women; you shouldn’t envy David. [13] “And David took him more concubines and
wives out of Jerusalem, after he was come from Hebron; and there were yet sons
and daughters born to David.” Every once
in a while you’ll meet some Christian guy who tries to excuse his
extracurricular activities on the basis of David’s polygamy. [14, “And these are the names of those who
were born unto him in Jerusalem ….]
Now this has come up two or three times, so let’s stop and come out with
an explanation of why polygamy was tolerated by God in the Old Testament. It goes back to the problem of phase two
sanctification. Out of this we’re going
to get a very interesting principle for our Christian life. Start here, this is the time you become a
Christian. Now during that time we have
a process theology calls sanctification.
Now forget yourself as an individual and let’s pretend this chart
represents the nation, so let’s go back to the birth of the nation with Abraham
at 2000 BC. Let’s come forward to the
time of Jesus Christ, so that line now represents twenty centuries of national
sanctification. Now if sanctification is
a learning and training process, which the Bible says it is, how do you suppose
God trains us? Now God has His absolute
requirements, His absolutes. They never
change. But, God doesn’t dump His
absolutes on you all in one big heap because if God demanded from you and from
me every one of His absolutes it would kill us.
Now let’s think for a moment of a child growing up. If the fall had never occurred the child
would be in perfect conformity with God’s absolute standards and it would be
just a matter of training into him certain habits. But now let’s suppose the child is a fallen
child and to make the fall kind of vivid to your mind, let’s pretend the child
is sick. So now we have a sick child;
the child grows up and he needs two things; he needs to be trained in the
positive that he needs medicine to fight the negative. He needs two things this side of the fall.
Now when God begins to work with the nation Israel, he has human
viewpoint that has to be overcome, and for a process of twenty centuries God is
attacking and destroying human viewpoint.
But you say wait a minute, here it is halfway through, at 2000 BC
Abraham was a polygamist; David was a polygamist, how come that thing hasn’t
been dealt with. Why doesn’t God deal
with that thing; for a reason that should give you a lot of encouragement in
your Christian life. God, remember, was
very stern with Abraham on one point—the death of his son. Has it ever struck you as unusual? Why did God make a federal case out of his
son, demanded that Abraham kill his son and not make a federal case out of a thing that would have been very easy to
handle, the problem of polygamy. Why is
God lenient in one area and tough in another.
Why does he lay the boom down on Abraham for this; why does he, for
example, with Moses, who was also a polygamist, why does he not handle that
problem with Moses, and yet He gets all upset because Moses hits the rock
twice? Why in David’s life does He get
all upset over the incident with Bathsheba when in effect by Genesis’ norms
David has been committing adultery all his life, because he was a
polygamist. Why make a federal case over
Bathsheba? Just another woman added to
the harem; why that one?
Well here you have something that has always amazed me about the God of
the Bible. He always treats you as an
individual, and teaches you piece by piece by piece, never all at once. Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way
he should go,” and we explained that, it wasn’t that at all, it was “Train up a
child according to his age,” in other words, you don’t dump differential
calculus on a third grader. You train
him up according to his age. All right, same principle in sanctification. Let’s map it out nationally first. Nationally speaking what was it God was
trying to get the nation to understand first, nothing else, I just want you to
trust Me, Israel, with your future and we’ll take care of the polygamy, we’ll
take care of the rest of it later, I’m not interested in that right now.
Now does that mean God, who is absolute righteous and just has
compromised those standards? Not at
all. But you say wait a minute, how can
a God who is absolutely righteous and just have fellowship with a nation that
He isn’t actually enforcing His righteousness and justice on them? It’s a simple word, you’ve heard it
before—grace. Sanctification is founded
on grace. Now look, some people have the
idea that the Christian life is this way, you start out with a whole pile of
crud and this threatens you salvation, and so what God does, He picks away at
it, He cleans one area and then He cleans up another area and so on, and your
salvation hangs on this. Not at all,
your salvation was solved at the time you became a Christian; your salvation
and relationship with God was sealed right there in history, when He called you
to Himself. When you became a Christian your acceptability with God was total
and complete at that point, even with all your nice crud, all of it didn’t make
a bit of difference to a gracious God.
Now obviously Christ took the problem; somebody had to take it, Christ
took it, but that’s where the substitutionary atonement comes in and why God
can have a relationship just as precious with Abraham, who is a polygamist, and
never raise the issue. I’m not saying
God tolerated polygamy and said Abraham, come on, get rid of Hagar, get rid of
these other girls; He didn’t say that at all.
Now He did Hagar for another reason, but God never made it an
issue. And here’s David in this passage,
God does not make polygamy an issue.
Now how do we tie this into sanctification. If God is righteous and just, if polygamy
does not fit and we know it doesn’t fit Genesis, why doesn’t God make it an
issue? The only way I can explain it is
this way: look at your life as having
many, many, many different areas. Every
one of those areas is messed up, total depravity, you’re all a bunch of damned
miserable sinners as Jonathan Edwards says.
And every area, therefore, is under the sin principle. Now sanctification is going to work, God
doesn’t clobber you all at once; He’ll work with this area, and then maybe
he’ll work with this area, and maybe he’ll work with this area, and that is why
you can never predict what God is doing in another Christian’s life. Don’t go around comparing notes in the bad
sense of the word. What God is doing in
your life is between you and him; and what God is doing in someone else’s life
is between God and that person, and it may be two entirely different areas. Do you know why? Because you’re an individual and God treats
you as an individual; He respects you as an individual, and when God’s program
of sanctification works in your life, He will not make issues out of things
that you actually know from the Word are wrong.
Now this is a very interesting point; you can be aware of things that
are wrong in your life and yet God does not seem to make an issue out of those;
He rather makes issues out of other things.
I can say from observation, these areas where God works in Christian
lives is not where you’d expect Him to work.
Where you would expect Him to work would be over in some overt thing, in
this area because that area is gross, society doesn’t like that area, or the
religious people don’t like this area or something else, and yet the strange
thing is, when you begin to work with people on a very close basis, and they
struggle with these problems, you find the Holy Spirit is making an issue out
of something completely different, and you wonder, does the Holy Spirit know
what He’s doing. Omniscience tells you
he does, but the tendency is to really downgrade the Holy Spirit in this area,
that the Holy Spirit really doesn’t know what he’s doing.
For example, let’s take some person out here and we’ll take some
problem, kleptomania or something, so here’s kleptomania, this is some obvious
overt activity, society doesn’t like it and people can’t stand it, so
kleptomania becomes an issue. Now you
would expect that the Holy Spirit, when He works in a believer’s life, would
immediately solve that problem. You see
what’s happening is, the problem bothers you, and so your tendency is Holy
Spirit, will You hurry up and take care of the problem. As a matter of fact, the Holy Spirit might
not be taking care of that problem, the Holy Spirit may be working in another
area, pride, mental attitude. The Holy
Spirit might be working in another area over here, approbation lust related to
pride. And every time this person steals
something or does something wrong, and the interconnection works out so they’re
out of fellowship, but the discipline doesn’t seem to center on that, yet they
really get clobbered for this thing over here, pride. You wonder, why doesn’t the Holy Spirit make this
kleptomania an issue? Because in the
wisdom of the Holy Spirit He sees something about that person’s soul. There’s something that has to be solved in
the area of mental attitude sins before you can produce a change in the overt
activity, and the Holy Spirit knows that.
After all, who made us, who regenerated us, who knows us best? The Holy Spirit, and therefore that’s the way
the Holy Spirit works. And it’s been one
of the most interesting things to watch from a pastor’s point of view is to
watch this thing, the Holy Spirit works in selected ways.
Now let’s take this to the problem of polygamy and the nation
Israel. The nation Israel had many
lessons to learn in their history. The
chief lesson was faith. Another lesson
was absolutism, that is that she would not be ecumenical in her religion, she
could not import things from many different religions, pile them all together
and come up with an eclecticism, that was not allowed in Israel. And God became angry with this and He would
judge them for it. And if there was a
problem over here with the area of faith, if there was a problem with idols,
with faith, then they’d get hit and hit hard, but you take the other things
down the line, such as marriage, and you could take many many other things but
let’s take marriage here, this marriage problem was not straightened out by God
the Holy Spirit in the nation. As it
were, He just overlooked it and moved on.
You say why did the Holy Spirit overlook this thing? Because He had more important work to
do. Now this is not an argument for polygamy
so just relax, it’s just saying that that sin among all the possible sins of
Israel was not considered high priority by the Holy Spirit. And at this point in David’s life there were
more important things to do to that nation than discipline them for polygamy,
and therefore God did not discipline them for polygamy. I hope that solves the polygamy problem; it
is God’s will for monogamy. In case you
didn’t get it, monogamy, and you can’t justify extra curricular activities on
the basis of the polygamy of the Old Testament.
All I’m saying is God didn’t make it an issue it then, but that doesn’t
mean He won’t make it an issue with you if you try it, because you’re not
Israel.
Now verse 17, here we have two very interesting accounts of attacks by
the Philistines upon the nation and the neat way that God in His sovereignty
worked to protect David and provide him with a victory. “But when the Philistines heard that they had
anointed David king over Israel, all the Philistines came up to seek David; and
David heard of it, and went down to the stronghold.” Now the first interesting thing about verse
17 is that the Philistines thought they had a deal working here, and they just
discovered they had blown it. David was fine in the southern position as king
over Judah. Why? Because he was hostile
to these people in the north, they had a split going across here, it was great
to keep David as king over Judah, marvelous, it was a genius plan. Now what happens, they turn around and what’s
this guy done? Now all Israel’s
converged on him and now he’s king. Now
they’ve got a serious problem. If you
were the Philistines could you see the problem.
Look, you’ve got all your forces lying along a very narrow coast. And the Hebrews control all the
highlands. Do you realize what that
spells militarily? The Jews can drive
out there and cut them at any point, and they’re very, very sensitive to
this.
And so, although the Scripture doesn’t tell us this, we know again from
extra-Biblical sources that the Philistines sent help all along the coast and
gathered together a mighty confederacy.
Josephus tells us about it. He
says: “let him know that all Syria and Phoenicia, with many other nations
besides them, and those warlike nations also, came to their assistance, and had
a share in this war.” Why do I say that?
Because something very interesting is going to happen here and you’ve
got to appreciate the work of God by appreciating the mess they’re in. This is almost like 1967 when the Jews were
surrounded by ten to one odds; they were completely outnumbered here, it was a
massive army.
Verse 18, “The Philistines also came and spread themselves in the valley
of the Rephaim,” or the valley of the giants; it means it’s a massive army, an
absolutely massive army that’s assembled here in the valley. It’s a tremendous threat. Verse 19, “And David inquired of the LORD,
saying,” those of you who have been with us through the Samuel series, do you now
see why musar pays off? What was the
musar in David’s life? Do you remember
the issue? Instead of worrying about how
many girlfriends David had, God was interested in one lesson; what was it? The lesson that before you move you ask Me! Before you send your army into the battle,
check the Urim and Thummim; go to that high priest and find out what I want,
and get that lesson down.
And every time David did not work with divine guidance, every time in a
military and political situation he abandoned the principle of going to the
Lord first to find out, he got clobbered.
We saw that over and over and over and over and over and over in 1
Samuel. Wasn’t God making a federal case
out of it? Yes he was; He was coming
into David’s life; He could have come in at many, many points of sin, but the
one place the Holy Spirit came into David’s life vehemently was over this issue
of divine guidance. And David was
severely trained. Now the severe
training pays off. “David inquired of
the Lord,” it’s almost automatic. See
the result? Proverbs says “chasten your
son while there is hope,” and this is what God is talking about, I chastened
David and chastened him and chastened him, there’s hope, he finally came
around, there was finally a +R learned behavior pattern of seeking divine
guidance. And here it comes out. “Shall I go up to the Philistines? Will You deliver them into mine hand? And the LORD said unto David, God up; for I
will certainly deliver the Philistines into your hand.”
Verse 20, “And David came to Baal-perazim, and David smote them there,
and said, The LORD has broken forth upon mine enemies before me, as the surging
of the waters. Therefore, he called the
name of that place Baal-perazim.” Now we
have to take that verse apart and find out what happened. The word peraz
is a word that is used for a bursting forth of water; it was used for the woman
as she gave birth to a child, the breaking of the waters. It was also used to springs that would
suddenly burst forth under pressure out of the ground. And then it came to refer to a particular
kind of reaction of God. To see this,
and again I’m trying to tie this in with how personal God works in your life,
watch how personal this word peraz
shows you He is toward believers.
Turn to Exodus 19:22, here’s a place where this word occurs about God
and His relationship to believers. To
get the context look at verse 21, “The LORD said unto Moses, Go down, charge
the people, lest they break through unto the LORD to gaze, and many of them
perish.” The situation is God is coming
down in fire, we don’t know why these people would perish but it has something
to do with the awesome presence of God.
Only authorized people are allowed into His presence; they’re somehow
shielded and so forth, and when God appeared on Mount Sinai the tendency would
be for the curious people to come up the mountain and see this, obviously it’s
a once in a lifetime experience, and so they’d want to go up and look at
it. Well, the warning is keep the people
away because if they come up this mountain I’m going to peraz against them, I’m going to break forth against them. And the breaking forth is amplified in
various other passages of Scripture so we know what this breaking forth is in
verse 22, “…sanctify themselves, lest the LORD break forth upon them,” it is by
fire in this case, peraz means the
Lord would suddenly consume them with fire.
It’s as though you have this fiery cloud on Mount Sinai and then out
goes this fire. Now why would it
suddenly come out? The word peraz means suddenly it would be there,
in a second it would be all over. Why is
it that the believer must be afraid that God would suddenly peraz against him, suddenly break out
like this?
Turn to Psalm 60:1, here’s another case where this strange word is used
for a very interesting personal activity of God. It goes along with the Psalm series. Remember how we discovered in the Psalm
series that our God, the God of the Bible is a very, very personal God, how He
gets angry with us personally. “O God,
Thou hast cast us off, You have scattered us, You have been displeased; oh,
turn yourself to us again.” Now the word
“scattered” means you have broken forth the promise, and all we can tell from
Psalm 60, this use of peraz isn’t
fire, we saw the fire used in Exodus, this means military defeat, a sudden
unexpected military defeat.
And then in Psalm 106:29 we have another use of peraz, this is about the plague of Numbers 10 and it says here
about certain people who became apostate, and “joined themselves” unto the
false gods and became idolatrous, and in verse 29, through idolatry “Thus they
provoked Yahweh to anger with their doings, and the plague” peraz “broke in upon them.” And in this case it is a sudden disease.
Now here’s our problem. Coming
back to 2 Samuel 5 and looking at the context, how are we to interpret peraz?
What does it mean when it says, “The LORD has broken forth upon my
enemies,” was it by fire, military defeat or disease? What does really the peraz mean? What is common
to all these three and is common to a bursting forth of water is suddenness, so
we infer from all the Biblical uses that when peraz occurs in the text it’s talking about a sudden unexpected
bursting forth of God’s anger. It’s just
sudden, it is so sudden, it’s not slowly coming on, like it would be, say with
the prophets, a lot of warning, the prophets would say Israel, Israel, Israel,
the destruction is coming, the third degree of discipline, the fourth degree,
the fifth degree, it will be slow, it would be predicted. But when peraz
occurs it’s just sudden, it hits out of the blue, that God hits and you wonder
why? Why is God doing this?
So we summarize all the meanings as this: peraz refers to a sudden chastening of God, an unexpected
chastening by God. Now using that as the
model for the word, looking at verse 20, what does it mean when it says, “He
has broken forth upon my enemies?” What
it means is that when the Philistines came up to attack, they had a long
history of victory over Israel. For
many, many years the Philistine armies had subdued the Jews at every point, and
now in one grand alliance with the people along the coast, with the Phoenicians
and others, the Syrians, they were certainly guaranteed of maintaining their
winning streak, and this was one sudden disaster. The disaster is very deceptive because when
you read it, here you’re only looking at two verses and so you tend to just
ignore it. But to show you how sudden,
and how disastrous the victory was for the Philistines, the last one, turn to
Isaiah 28:21, it went down in history as one of the two greatest defeats the Philistines
had ever experienced. And that is saying
a lot, because one of the most warlike nations that Israel ever had to fight
was the Philistines.
Isaiah 28:21, Isaiah recalls those days, and he says Philistia, I’m
going to tell you something, “For the LORD shall rise up as in Mount Perazim;
He shall be as angry as in the valley of Gibeon, that He may do His work, His
strange work, and bring to pass His act, His strange act.” Now what happened in the valley of
Gibeon? In Joshua 10, remember what happened,
when suddenly there was a little astro artillery directed at the Philistines,
remember Joshua pursued the Canaanites, God stopped the earth from rotating, or
apparently He turned the axis as Velikovsky’s theory would go, and something
happened, the sun stayed up, at least positionally and relative to the earth,
it stayed up this way. And it’s been
observed in the western hemisphere, the Indians record a long night. And in the eastern hemisphere the Indians
record a long day. So since mythology doesn’t
vary longitudinally it’s very good eye proof that it actually happened. So
something strange happened, God stopped… nothing before or since had ever done
like that. But in Isaiah’s day he says,
God will be as angry with you as in the Mount Perazim, and in the valley of
Gibeon. In other words, there would be a
sudden shocking, miraculous defeat.
Turn back to 2 Samuel 5; we’re tempted to try to find out what happened,
unfortunately the Holy Spirit never filled us in on all the details of exactly
what happened, except one. Verse 21,
“And there they left their images, and David and his men burned them,”
literally they carried them away, but 1 Chronicles 11, the parallel passage
says that he burned them. Now why is
that little detail left in there, when all these interesting things could have
been said; we’d love to find out what this peraz
was, was it fire from heaven, was it some cave in, something happened to cause
a fantastic defeat. And here we are
curious about that and instead of satisfying our curiosity the Holy Spirit just
adds what appears to be an anticlimactic note, “they burned their idols.” Kind of an anticlimactic note. The burning of the idols is David’s revenge
and the Lord’s for 1 Samuel 4 and the battle of Aphek. At the battle of Aphek
the Philistines captured the ark of the covenant, which to their terms was the
idol of Israel. It was a disastrous
defeat at Aphek. The Israeli army turned
and ran and left the idols in the fields, and so what does God do? I’ll pay them back, and David, you’re going to have the wonderful position
of being the commander in charge when the Philistines leave the field of battle
so fast you take their idols, go ahead, take Dagon, and take the rest of their
awful images and destroy them and burn them.
So this is connected vitally with the whole thrust of Samuel.
But something even more amazing occurs before this chapter ends. Verse 22, “And the Philistines came up yet
again,” again they start the war, notice, they
start the war, they had a Jewish problem but it was always the Philistines that
started the war. And “they spread
themselves in the valley of Rephaim.”
Verse 23, “And David inquired of the LORD, he said, Thou shalt not go
up” again, see musar pays off, and
this time the Lord said now David, I want you to do something very
interesting. I want you in the King
James it says “but fetch a compass behind them,” now what does that mean, go
out and get your Boy Scout compass and set it?
It meant that he went around their army, in the back, I want you to
surround them, just go around back, because whatever it was, it was such a
shock the first time, apparently the Philistines couldn’t believe David could
pull it off again. And they were very
assured that they had him nailed this time.
So God is going to move them around in back, and He said, “and come upon
them over against the mulberry trees.
[24] And let it be, when you hear the sound of a going [marching] in the
tops of the mulberry trees; that then you shall bestir thyself….”
Now what is the sound of the going?
Well, apparently what this text is telling us is this is one of those
amazing times of history when David’s troops were lined up behind all these
trees, and these trees weren’t very high, but they were high enough so that you
could almost see the tops of them, these particular trees in this area, they’re
still there incidentally, and he said not get your men down so they can just
see the level of the tops of them. I
want you to wait there, and David obviously, well how long does my army sit
there behind the mulberry trees, and God said when you hear this noise of a
going. Now the noise of a going is
apparently an angelic phenomenon where the tops of the trees, and again, extra-Biblical
material reports that the trees, on a day when the wind was calm, began to move
and sway, as though an army was marching across the tops of the trees, and God
says hold until you hear that.
Now what was really happening? We
have insight what was happening in that famous passage I’ve shown you many
times before, in 2 Kings 6:16-17, what is happening in the mulberry trees in
David’s day is a vast horde of elect angels that are going to destroy the
Philistine army, and apparently it takes time to mobilize the army. This is kind of interesting to think that
angels take time to get together, but we know from Daniel that they do; they
operate on time although it’s a different kind of time than we operate on; they
operate on time and it takes them time to get together and move from point to
point. And apparently what God said,
David, I have an angelic army on the way to help you; now if you really want to
clobber these Philistines, just hold it, just stand by until they assemble. And
when they assemble, I’m going to tell the angelic army to move their feet a
little bit, to move the bushes, and when you see the bushes moving, that’s your
signal. That means that the angelic army
is in position.
Now to see that this is a constant theme, it’s not just here in the
mulberry bushes, it occurs again and again; here in 2 Kings 6, one of the most
amazing sights, verse 17, “And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open
his eyes, that he may see.” This is a
downhearted, discouraged believer who thinks there’s nobody in the universe
helping him. “And the LORD opened the
eyes of the young man, and he saw; and, behold, the mountain was full of horses
and chariots of fire round about Elisha.”
Now this is the same way, now how God opens the eyes we have no idea,
but in certain cases, at times in history, God actually modifies the sensory
perception of the human being so we can see what’s here. Right now all you see is anything material in
this room, but actually right now in this room there are spirits both good and
evil. They are bodily here, present,
take a swing, you might hit one. And as they are here they’re moving around and
so forth, but we can’t see them and normally God does not permit us to see
them. But under certain conditions we
can see them, and if we could see them we would see them assemble into military
type formations, because this is the way they seem to operate. And here is one
of those rare cases in Scripture where the man’s eyes are somehow modified, and
he can actually see this. Now why does
God do this at this point? The boy is
discouraged, and to him he’s all alone, and to him he faces overwhelming odds,
and God says look, I just want to assure you that you have friends that you
don’t see, you have friends all around you that I have provided for you, just
relax, I’ve got things under control.
That’s the same thing that is being taught to David here in the mulberry
trees. And so when you read those final
verses, verses 24-25, just use those as a vivid picture some time in your
Christian life when you’re tempted to go out and clobber some problem, to just
be patient, maybe it’s not the Lord’s timing.
Now obviously you’re not going to sit around and watch the mulberry
trees move, but the point remains that the principle is the same. God has angelic forces at work to protect the
body of Jesus Christ on earth today. These are active and protecting you. They do their jobs to protect you in various
ways; someday you’ll get a chance to write a biography of your life from the
other side and see all the things they did, all the goofy things you did and
how they got you out of this jam, that jam, and another jam. [24b “for then shall the LORD go out before
thee, to smite the hose of the Philistines.”] And this is why, when “David did
so, as the LORD had commanded him, and smote the Philistines from Geba until
you come to Gezer.” That was the
military road that had to be secured.
With this David’s control over the central highlands is complete.
Now there’s only one thing lacking, he needs a legal base for his
kingdom; he’s got it as far as the throne right but now God is going to give
him two extra things: an ark and a covenant, and with this the kingdom core
will be finished. With our heads bowed….