David

Following the death in battle of Saul, king of Israel, David (1085-1015 BC) is first anointed king of Judah (1055) then, seven years later (1047), king of Israel (2 Samuel 5:4-5). After David and his men take Jerusalem, he makes it the capital of the united kingdom of Judah and Israel. “David went on and became great, for Yahweh, God of Hosts, was with him” (v. 10).

Vulcan, false god of technology, bullies, bribes, and deceives us into building cities as our greatest monuments to him. Against Vulcan, David seeks to introduce a different element into Jerusalem. He seeks to devote the city to Yahweh by building in it a house (temple) for the Ark of the Covenant (ch. 6). The prophet Nathan, however, tells David that Yahweh does not desire this. Instead, Yahweh will build a house (dynasty) for David that will endure forever (ch. 7).

The Mysterious Intertwining of Our Lives with Jesus

David hit what was perhaps the worst moment in his life. His own son Absalom led a coup d’état against him. David and those still close and loyal to him had to flee Jerusalem to even have a chance to survive. And David went up the ascent of the Mount of Olives, and wept as he went, and his head was covered and he walked barefoot (2 Samuel 15:30). A thousand years later, Jesus would also be in agony on that same hill (Luke 22:39, 44).

  
Years before, Nathan the prophet had forewarned David of these looming disasters. They were all willed by Yahweh as a direct consequence David’s acts of adultery and murder. Even so, Yahweh continued to love David more than he could even imagine. Yahweh also fled Jerusalem with David even as he stayed behind in Jerusalem to aid those still loyal to David in the city.

Jesus Puts No One above the Law

David had a special relationship with Yahweh. His strong devotion to Yahweh set a standard against which subsequent kings of Israel and Judah failed to measure up. It was said of David’s son Solomon, for example, that when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away after other gods; and his heart was not wholly devoted to [Yahweh] his God, as the heart of David his father had been (1 Kings 11:4, New American Standard Version, here and following). Through the prophet Ahijah, Yahweh told another king of Israel, “you have not been like My servant David, who kept My commandments and who followed Me with all his heart, to do only that which was right in My sight” (1 Kings 14:8). No, David loved Yahweh with all his heart, soul, and mind, just as both Moses and Jesus tell us to do (Deuteronomy 6:4, Matthew 22:37).

     
At the same time, Yahweh demonstrated his steadfast love to David. Once David had thoroughly subdued all of the traditional enemies of Israel, and found himself living in a palatial house of cedar, he decided he would build a house for Yahweh as well. From the Exodus until that time, the focal point of the presence of Yahweh on Earth had been the Ark of the Covenant kept in a tent.

Jerusalem: Olympian City Becomes Righteous Too

According to the Bible, there was nothing special about Jerusalem’s beginnings. As Ezekiel put it, Thus says the [Lord Yahweh] to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite (16:3).