2 Samuel 21:1-14

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Will you open us up with a word of prayer? Today, thank you,

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Lord. Thank you that today could be the day we can come to worship that we've set aside this Sunday for you.

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We now ask you to bless Mike and his studies and what's been prepared for us, and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

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Amen. 2 Samuel, chapter 21, read the whole chapter.

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I don't think we're gonna get through. I know it's short, but I don't think so. We may. We've got some jumping around to do to kind of get some context of what has happened, so just bear with me.

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Now, there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year.

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David sought the presence of the Lord, and the Lord said, it is for Saul and his bloody house, because he put the

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Gibeonites to death. So the king called the Gibeonites, spoke to them, and now the Gibeonites were not the sons of Israel, but the remnant of the

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Amorites, and the sons of Israel had made a covenant with them. But Saul had sought to kill them in his zeal for the sons of Israel and Judah.

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Thus, David said to the Gibeonites, what should I do for you, and how can I make atonement that you may bless the inheritance of the

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Lord? And then the Gibeonites said to him, we have no concern over silver or gold with Saul or his house, nor is it for us to put any man to death in Israel.

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And he said, I will do for you whatever you say. So they said to the king, the man who consumed us and who planned to exterminate us from the remaining within the borders of Israel, let seven men from his sons be given to us, and we will hang them before the

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Lord at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the Lord. And the king said, I will give them to you.

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But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of the oath which he had made between them, between David and Saul's son,

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Jonathan. So the king took the sons of Rizpah, the daughter of Armani and Mephibosheth, that's another

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Mephibosheth, whom she had borne to Saul, and the five sons of Merob, the daughter of Saul, whom she had borne to Adriel, the son of Barzillai, the

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Mahoathite. Then he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them before the

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Lord in the mountain before the Lord, so that the seven of them fell together, and they put to death in the first day of the harvest, at the beginning of the barley harvest.

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And Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth and spread it out for herself on the rock from the beginning of the harvest until it rained on them from the sky, and she allowed neither the birds of the sky to rest on them nor day or the beasts of the field by night.

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And when it was told David, what Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done, then

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David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan, his son, from the men at Jabesh -gilead, who had stolen them from the open square in Beshan, where the

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Philistines had hanged them on the day that the Philistines struck down Saul in Gilboa.

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He brought up the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan, his son, from there, and they gathered the bones of them who had been hanged, and they buried the bones of Saul and Jonathan, his son, in the country of Benjamin and Zillah at the grave of Kish, his father.

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Thus they did, all the king commanded, and after that, God was moved by prayer for the land.

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Now, when the Philistines were at war again with Israel, David went down and his servants with them, and as they fought against the

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Philistines, David became weary. Then Ishbonob, or what have you say his name, who was among the descendants of the giant, the weight whose spear was 300 shekels of bronze, his girdle with a new sword, and he intended to kill

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David with it. But Abishai, the son of Zeriah, helped him, and he struck down the

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Philistine and killed him, and the men of David swore to him, saying, you shall not go out again with us to battle so that you do not extinguish the lamp of Israel.

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Now, it came about again that there was war with the Philistines at Gob. Then Sivakai, the

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Hushanite, struck down Sath, who was among the descendants of the giant, and there was war again with the

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Philistines at Gob, and Elhani, the son of Jerugim, the

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Bethlehemite, killed Goliath, the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam.

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And there was war at Gath again, where there was a man whose stature had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot.

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He was 24 in number, and he also had been born to the giant. And when he defied

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Israel, Jonathan, the son of Shimei, David's brother, struck him down. These four were born to the giant in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.

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It's interesting that they have grouped the killing of those giants in with this narrative. It's just, for whatever reason, on the inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit, the narrator has done that. This brings us to a very interesting story in history of the redemptive, the unfolding of redemptive history in the life of David.

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I'm not sure when this takes place. It says, now when there was famine in the days of David for three years.

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I'm not sure when. Could this have been consecutively after what had taken place with Sheba?

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It's possible. It almost seems unlikely, but it could have.

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But there was a famine in the land. You may remember what famine was a result of under the old covenant.

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When a famine, we're not talking about, hey, we missed a little bit of rain this harvest. What famine was a time when there was no rain.

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And we're talking about for three years. Usually, under the Mosaic legislation, was that not a curse of God on the people?

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Right? Anybody remember that? He says, hey, when you disobey me, you won't have any crops, you won't have any rain, you won't have any harvest, all of that.

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Well, David realizes, hey, this has happened year after year. So it says in verse one, that David sought the presence of the

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Lord, and the Lord said to him, it is for Saul and his bloody house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.

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So David realizes that there's obviously a problem. And he says, Lord, what's going on?

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Was that not what David's role was to do? When you see calamity happening, what was he to do?

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He was supposed to seek the Lord's face. And that's exactly what he did. God said, it looks like here, God didn't hesitate.

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You know why this is happening? You know why your people are starving? You know why there's no rain? It's because of Saul. You go, wow, why is

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David being punished, per se, or chastised for something that Saul did?

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We could go, if y 'all wanna flip back, we could, or I could just make it quick. In Joshua chapter nine, when they were making their conquest, and they had heard what the people had done in Ai, and they were scared to death.

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And they remember what they did? They came in, basically in a costume, ragtag clothes, molded bread, old wineskins.

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And they came in and says, hey, we're just needing help. And what did

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Joshua do? He made a leap with them. He made a covenant with them. It actually says he cut a covenant with them.

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And remember, when you cut a covenant, that's basically saying, when they cut, it was taking those two animals, or sacrificing one, saying whatever, whoever party breaks that, this is what will happen to us.

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And if you go back and you read that in Joshua, it actually says, once they did that, they found out they had been deceived, the people, the congregation says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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We need to wipe them out anyway. And the elders in Joshua said, we can't do that.

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We have taken an oath sworn before the Lord, before Yahweh, we can't do that. But what we can do is we can make them slave labor.

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They made them, remember, they made them hewers of stone, carriers and cutters of wood, and toters of water.

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That's basically what they did. So it did say, Joshua says, if we violate this law, this covenant that we have made with God, with these people, we will incur the wrath of God on the people and the land.

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Okay, so we need to remember that that is why they did not go ahead and extinguish them. Interesting that Saul, he would not go in and wipe out the

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Jebusites. Remember who was in Jerusalem when David, it was Jabez at the time, who was in Jerusalem when

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David threw Goliath's head over the wall? It was the remnant of the Amorites, which were some of the

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Jebusites. So when Saul was in the monarchy, he failed to run them out.

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What's the first thing David does when he comes in power? What does he do? He makes a conquest to overrun

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Jerusalem, get them out, and to basically make the land what

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God had intended it to be. Actually, he had run out all their enemies at that point. Well, Saul failed to do that.

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But he also, if you remember, I think it was back in chapter 18 or 20, somewhere out there in 1

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Samuel, you remember what he did to his own countrymen? Not only did he kill 85 priests, he slaughtered a city of his own countrymen.

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So now you have him, he didn't extinguish those whom he was supposed to, but we have two times in which he killed his,

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Saul intentionally killed those in Nob, those were his countrymen, and then he then violates the law of God or the covenant made with God when he goes and he tries to run out the

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Gibeonites. Now, it does say the reason that he did it was for the zeal of Israel and for the remnant that was there.

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Whatever reason, dude, that's ethnic cleansing. There's no way around it. His desire was to wipe out all the

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Gibeonites. And God says it's for Saul and his bloody house. I want you to remember bloody house.

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That is key for understanding as we get towards the end and what takes place is why, well, we'll get there.

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Just remember bloody house, Saul's home. As a federal head, Saul represented his family.

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He represented the people. Therefore, his house is represented by the very things that Saul has done because he put the

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Gibeonites to death. So the king called to the Gibeonites and spoke to them. Now, the Gibeonites were not the sons of Israel, but were the remnant of the

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Amorites, and it talks about the covenant that they made. And it says in his zeal to kill the sons of Israel, I'm sorry, to kill them for the zeal for Israel and Judah.

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Then verse three, thus David said to the Gibeonites, what should I do for you? Okay, one, we have to ask ourself, why didn't he ask

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God? Okay, he entreated on God, why is the land under a famine?

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He says, because of what Saul did. I don't know about y 'all, but when I'm reading that,

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I go, well then why didn't he ask God what to do? Hey, what would you have me to do? Well, we have to understand that David knew what the law of God said about when you murder someone.

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Was that murdering, wholesale murder of the Gibeonites? Was it? Okay, it was.

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Now, you could go back to Deuteronomy and you could go back to Numbers 35 if y 'all wanna read that on your own.

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And it talks about polluting the land from blood guiltiness, okay? If blood guiltiness, if you pollute the land for shedding innocent blood, there was one and one way only to unpollute the land and that was to shed blood.

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Hey, we can go all the way back to when they come out of the ark, what was one of the first commands given to them?

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And he said, all right, go ahead, that's right. And then he says, hey, if a man's blood shed, innocent blood is shed, by that man's blood, it should, by that, his blood shall be shed as well.

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Okay, so eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. And it's interesting how the Gibeonites in verse four even understood that too.

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I was gonna bring that up. You get down because they understand if you go to, if we were to read in Numbers 30 when it deals with, there's a whole, that whole chapter deals with the 48 cities of the

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Levites and the cities of refuge and all of that, but he gets to the blood guiltiness as you get to the end.

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It even says you can't ransom that back. So if that's what you're talking about when they say, hey, we don't want money.

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We don't want money and we don't want, basically, we don't want reparations. We want the thing that the law of God requires of someone if they murder someone.

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Interesting that the Gibeonites knew that. That the Gibeonites knew that. Now, my understanding is that's why

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David didn't ask. David knew what the law said. Now, there might be other teachers out there that say, hey, what David did was wrong.

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David had no business saying to the Gibeonites, what would you have me do?

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But as we get to the end, we will understand that once David did what he did, what happened?

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The plague was lifted. So that means David did what he was supposed to do. David was not in error, per se, of asking the

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Gibeonites. You asking a question? No. Okay. For asking the

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Gibeonites what they wanted. So, here, where are we at?

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Okay. It says, but Saul, verse three, then David said to the

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Gibeonites, what shall I do for you and how can I make atonement? And that is the work of far there, okay?

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How can I make an atonement for what has happened? That you may bless the inheritance of God.

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In verse four, the Gibeonites said to him, we don't have any concern of gold or silver with Saul or his house, nor is it for us to put any man to death in Israel.

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Okay. They also understood that they don't have the right for capital punishment.

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They understood that, okay, we are basically living in occupied land. If someone's going to put someone to death, it can't be us, it has to come through the throne, has to come through David.

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David's the only one that can say, hey, man, I want so and so put to death. And they understand that.

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It says, then the Gibeonites said to him, and he said, I will do for you whatever you say.

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David didn't even lay out some options. He just said, hey, whatever you want me to do, you tell me what it is and I'll do it.

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I want to say that is a very good indication of how much David did love his people.

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Look, he was seeing his people starve. He was seeing them suffer. Once again, what does David do? He steps in their place and says, hey,

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I'll do whatever I have to do to make this right. One, because obviously what Saul did was wrong in the eyes of God.

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Now, what was once Saul's problem is now his problem and I'm willing to do whatever necessary to see that it's taken care of.

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So once again, he steps into the place of being the one to be the mediator. And he says in verse five, so they said to the king, the man who consumed us and who planned to exterminate us.

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What does that say about Saul? Saul just wasn't going through there just being a little brutal, okay? He wasn't just, you know what, man, we ain't been beating up enough

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Philistines, let's go to the Gibeonites and whack a few of them off so we can keep our war efforts and sharp tactics up to par.

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That's not, it says here that he tried to consume us and he had planned to exterminate us from remaining within the borders of Israel.

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And here's what their request was. Let seven men from his sons be given to us and we will hang them before the

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Lord in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the Lord. And the king said,

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I will give them to you. Now, there is some difficulties in how this should be understood or is

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David going to punish the descendants of Saul for the sins of Saul?

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That is a good question. I don't know about y 'all, that was the question I asked because what does it say? That the sins of the, go ahead, you can take a second.

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Yeah, it's unlivable. The kid shouldn't be killed for the father's sins. That's why I think it's very important to remember what

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God said to David when he asked. His bloody house, his bloody house.

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Hey, these young men were probably in the army.

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You understand that? These were the descendants of Saul. These were sons and grandsons.

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You don't think they were partakers of this? Really? Wasn't Jonathan in the army?

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Sure. Could Jonathan had partaken some of that? Maybe, we don't know, but we know this.

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It's God says specifically right here, his house. Not Saul as an individual, but his house and as a federal head of the people, he represents not only the nation.

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Look, as his federal head, as he represented the nation, who's suffering because of Saul's sin right now?

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The people. So just like we have a federal head, what's our federal head as believers? Christ.

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Christ, who was our federal head before that? Adam. And did we not suffer death, condemnation, and the wrath of God abiding on us because of what our federal head did in the garden by disobeying?

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Yes. So Saul, as a representative of the people, has now incurred the wrath of God on the people because he broke the covenant.

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Now, their request is let seven men of his sons be given to us.

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They understand that the only way to make retribution for what has happened is blood for blood.

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And under the Mosaic legislation, that was correct. Blood for blood. If the land is polluted because of blood guiltiness, blood must be shed.

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That's the only way for it to go away. They understood that. It's interesting that they understood that quicker than David almost.

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Because David says, okay, whatever you want me to do. I do wonder when he said, and they said, hey, we don't want any gold or we don't want any silver.

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I do wonder, was David thinking these things to ask me to go knock on some doors and round up some descendants?

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I mean, we don't know. So they say, hey, give us the descendants of Saul, seven of them.

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Interesting, the chosen of the Lord. That's how they saw. Yeah, was Saul anointed by the

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Lord to be their federal head when he was in the monarchy? Certainly was, but actually he was chosen by the people.

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Chosen by the people, anointed by God. God gave them what they wanted. Do you remember what he said? I'm gonna give you what you want and here's what's gonna happen.

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If he disobeys, he's gonna incur wrath upon the people. When he disobeys, he is going to incur judgment on you.

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He's gonna take your women, your son. Yeah, all these things. I mean, here it is, however long this is later, because we don't know how long into Saul's reign that this actually took place either.

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We don't know. We don't know how long this had taken place. And another thing we can say, does

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God have to dispense justice and wrath immediately? No, he doesn't.

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God could await, hey, we could even say if this is towards the end of David's reign, man,

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God would have waited almost 40 years to do this. God is not obligated at any time to drop the hammer when we think he should.

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Now, should he every time drop the hammer immediately? He should, but when he doesn't.

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But then we're in trouble. What's that? Yeah, but because of his grace, he does not.

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I do wonder, as we're reading this and walking through it, go, okay, what if this famine would have happened when

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Saul would have started? What would Saul have done? Saul would have kept killing

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Gibeonites, because we know that Saul did what? He consistently and constantly disobeyed the word of God.

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This is prime example. He wouldn't care nothing about his people. Look, if he'll kill 85 priests and then slay a whole city because they thought they were hiding

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David, I mean, this would have been no big deal to him. And he knew that they were not supposed to fight the

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Gibeonites, because it was basically within the law of God to not do so. So you get to verse seven.

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It says, but the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul. So just kind of timeframe, we know this has to be sometime after 8 and 9 of 2

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Samuel, because that's when Mephibosheth comes on the scene. David's taking care of him. He knows that Mephibosheth's alive.

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So that's how we know this has happened after Mephibosheth has come back and quote David's court.

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And it says the reason why he spared Mephibosheth. He did it because of the oath that he took with Jonathan.

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What was the, and we've talked about it three weeks in a row already. What was that oath? He would not take up the sword against his descendants.

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Yeah, he wouldn't wipe out Jonathan's because of his covenant he made with Jonathan and his love for Jonathan.

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Remember him and Jonathan were knit together. So they were joined together at the time that they begin to fight with, not fight one another, fight with one another as they were going out fighting

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Philistines. But we need to understand as well that David is not violating his promise that he made to Saul.

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Do you remember the last interaction that David had with Saul? And what Saul says, you'll be king.

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Do you remember what he asked? He says, don't wipe out my, just don't wipe out my family.

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And David says, okay, all right, I won't do that. By him saving

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Mephibosheth, David has not violated his covenant, the oath that he took with Saul.

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Remember that was when Abishag wanted to run to Spiritho. He went out there, remember, they were in the middle.

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That's when he went away and he called out Abner. You remember that? That's when he says, hey, now I know you're more righteous than me.

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And he says, just don't kill my family, basically is what he said. So verse eight, the king took the two sons of Rizvah, the daughter of Aiah.

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Who was Rizvah? Anybody remember? It's concubine,

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Saul's concubine. So Abishag was a secondhand wife with secondhand kids. I mean, that's just the way it was.

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Took Armoni and Mephibosheth, like I said, that's another Mephibosheth. Interesting, that's the same name.

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Huh? Huh? Just like Mike in the opening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it says, whom she had borne to Saul and the five sons of Mirab, the daughter of Saul.

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I'm just about guaranteed some of y 'all's translation says Michael, okay? And who says Michael?

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King James, what do you have? King James as well? Yeah, does yours, do you have

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King James? New King James? Okay, just people don't like to hear this, okay? That's a scribal error.

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All right, that's all there is to it. And how do we know that? Turn over to Chronicles 20 and it tells you.

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It's Mirab. Yeah, and how do we know that this is Mirab and not

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Michael? Because Mirab was given to who? Adriel, do you see it? Okay, I mean, people don't like to hear that.

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But remember, there are scribal errors that were made in the

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Masoretic. I mean, there's no way around it. We're not saying the authenticity, the scripture can't be trusted, but these are passages like this that egg -headed liberals go to and say, hey, look, right there, the

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Bible is wrong. Look, the Bible is without error in its original writings and in its doctrine and theology.

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This in no way, this scribal error, okay, is in no way changed the doctrine and theology, the order of salvation, or how men and women are made right before a holy

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God on the final day of judgment or the resurrection. Okay, no way. And it's interesting, if you look up any exegetical commentary, it tells you undoubtedly this was a scribal error.

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And in an effort to keep the authenticity of the Masoretic text, you know what they do?

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They copy the scribal error in there.

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What's that? No, I was gonna say. Yeah, I don't know if you remember when we were in this room over here doing 1

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Samuel, this guy popped off, I'll give anybody a $100 ,000 check if they can show me any error and give us into King James.

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I was like, buddy, you better get your checkbook ready because you're gonna write me two checks, so it'll be 200 grand. Because if you wanna get smart mouth like that, there are scribal errors that they know, even the copiers knew it.

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Now, if it was me, and I was, I'd fix that.

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Yeah, just fix it. Because now you have, so you got the Chronicles passage in 1 Chronicles 20, and you have this one here.

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And when we reconcile the two, we can see to it that Mirab, we know that Mirab was given to Adriel.

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How do we know that? Back in 1 Samuel. Who was Michael given to?

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Paltiel. You remember when David? David, yeah, 20 years later, however long that was.

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Remember, Abner, he says, hey, I bought her with four skins. I want her back.

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And door gets knocked on, and Abner says, all right,

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Michael, get your makeup, your dress, look good, look good and smell good, or you're going back to David.

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And remember what happened? Paltiel followed behind him. And when they got to Bahrain, Abner said, suck it up, buddy, go home.

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David's wife. Yeah, Michael. I got mad at him. Well, Michael is a, it's

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Mirab. The correct translation is Mirab. And how do we know that? Because Mirab was the one who was born to Adriel, the son of Berziah.

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Okay, Michael was David's wife that he bought with 204 skins.

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Only required 100. But if you remember what happened, Mirab originally was supposed to be given to David.

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And what did Saul say? Nah, let me give her Michael. She'll be a snare to him.

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Originally, he was supposed to have Mirab. So it almost, what's that? I thought there was a wife that eventually the father took her from David.

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That's Michael. Okay. Well, what happened is David, he fleed. Right. Last time we see,

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I think, her and him together, she had put the giant idol in the bed. Right, but not this, Michael. This is

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Mirab. Mirab's her sister. Okay. So that's where the, okay, I thought it was just like a misspelling or something.

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No, no, it's a scribal. Wrong name. Yeah, wrong name. So you can go back and if you want to look at it, you can read in First Chronicles 20.

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And Mike, it's also interesting in Qumran, where the Essesim took the

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Masoretic text. You'll see a lot of those texts, they've got the correction. Sure. On the side. Yeah, they do, yeah.

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And, yeah. Yeah, and the Essenes realized there was an issue. Yeah, and those took place in the intertestamental time, by the way, just to let y 'all know, they realized there was a scribal error and they did try to fix that.

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I don't know if y 'all know who the Essenes were, but they arised in the intertestamental time along with the

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Pharisees. You all right? Along with the Pharisees and the Sadducees and. They were the

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Xerox of the day. Yeah. Yeah, and it's interesting, when we get into Daniel, we're actually gonna talk about some of their beliefs and they believed there would be two messiahs that would come.

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They saw one that would be suffering and they saw one that would be a militant political leader.

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And it's interesting, so we don't get off on too much of a rabbit trail, but it's interesting from what we do understand is that John the

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Baptist probably was raised up in an Essene type reading of scripture.

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The way that he, the rugged way, his body rugged, rough in the wilderness, that was the

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Essenes. And it's interesting that he sends his, when he's put in prison, he sends his disciples to Jesus and says, hey, should we expect another?

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And people go, oh man, he was in a time of unbelief. I would say he wasn't in a time of unbelief, if you understand, if he was following the teachings or his understanding, because the

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Holy Spirit had not been yet given. Did he have the Holy Spirit? Yes, but it was not given as it is under the new covenant.

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He was understanding it, hey, maybe he's the one that's to die and the next one after him's going to be the one to establish the kingdom.

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That's how I understand it. Some people believe that, but if you understand where kind of the history of where he may have come from and his teaching and he was out in the wilderness being taught and the

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Essenes and all of that. And the Essenes were, their theology wasn't too quack -a -doodle.

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I mean, it wasn't. Obviously, all of them were a little off in some areas, obviously the Sadducees and anyway.

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But we'll talk about the Essenes and we get to Daniel. Sorry, Mike. Sorry, that's all right. Because the Qumran, people don't really think about the

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Dead Sea Scrolls or the Qumran stuff. I mean, some of that, when we get into Daniel, I mean, you have, since when we get to the 77s, there were

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Qumran scrolls that gave us better understanding of what the intertestamental time of how they understood the 77s.

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Oh, man, that's going to be fun. And Daniel. We'll get, yeah, when we get to Daniel.

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We'll be there and hopefully end by Christmas. Hopefully, maybe.

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So here it is. He says he took the five sons of Merab, the daughter of Saul, who she had born to Adriel, the

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Mahoathite. And he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites and they hanged them in the mountain of the

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Lord before them. All seven of them fell together and they were put to death in the first day of the harvest in the beginning of the barley harvest.

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I don't know about y 'all. You read that and you go, wait a minute. How could they be hung? All seven of them at the beginning of the harvest.

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This has been a famine for three years. Was there a harvest? No, but it's giving you a timestamp of this was probably in the spring.

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When did they gather the barley in? In the spring. So there was a time of festival, a time of being happy.

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Remember, anytime they brought in the harvest, man, it was partying. Yeah, just like Shear and the

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Sheep. It's party time. Well, this was not a time for her to be happy. Her sons and the seven descendants of Saul were hung.

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What's that? What's this? Should we party or eat some ice cream? And it says in the beginning of the wheat harvest.

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I'm sorry, the barley harvest. And Rizvah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock from the beginning of the harvest until it rained on them from the sky.

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And she allowed neither the birds of the sky to rest on them by day, nor the beast of the field by night.

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Hey, we don't know how long this was. We don't know. But there is an interesting little tidbit of information.

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It says until the rain fell on them, that, hey, we knew that God's wrath had been lifted.

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And God's wrath had been lifted. There had been no rain. There was a famine because there had been no rain.

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Now, were they hung, crucified? No, okay?

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Crucifixion was not yet perfected by the Romans at this point.

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I understand this to either be hung by a rope by the neck or impaled. Most likely impaled.

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Most likely. What's that? Well, she did not allow the blood money.

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Yeah, she used it to keep their bodies from being desecrated by the animals.

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Oh. She was trying to keep them. Hey, imagine the love for her kids that she's going to stay out there, basically build a lean -to, and she's going to stay out there during the day.

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With a broom. Yeah, yeah, broom and at night fighting off, I mean, who knows?

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Isn't it lions, mountain lions, whatever? Coyotes, wolves, whatever.

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And she'd fight them off. You think about famines, birds, stuff like that. There's not stuff for them to eat.

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Nope, they sure eat that flesh. This is going to be highly interesting for them. Yeah, yeah, and we think of the birds, we understand that not to be mocking birds.

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Okay, this is vultures. And if there's been a famine. Hungry vultures. Yeah, they're going to be hungry.

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Yeah, they're going to be hungry. Verse 11, when it was told to David that it was by the daughter of Isaiah, the concubine of Saul, and what she had done, then

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David sent and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan, his son from Jabesh Gilead. Remember, when

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Saul and Jonathan's body, these men, where were we at?

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These men right here were the ones that went and got them. And this is where their bones have been for however long that was.

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This is where they've been. They have not been, quote, gathered to his fathers. Remember, earlier in the book, we talked about the significance of being buried with their fathers.

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See, everybody wanted to be buried with their people. So now David's going to, once again, show an act of compassion.

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He did it in their dead state, and he's going to bury them with their father Kish, the grandfather and great -grandfather.

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It says, verse 13, he brought up the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan, his son, from there, and they gathered the bones of those who had been hanged.

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And he buried the bones of Saul and Jonathan, his son, in the country of Benjamin and Zillah, the grave of Kish, his father.

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Thus they did all that the king commanded. And after that, God moved by prayer for the land.

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Mike, does your say something different than that? King James say something different than moving by prayer and treated for the land.

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So in other words, here it is. You had people praying, God, whatever this is, tell us what it is, fix it. Now, God now has answered the prayer and entreated the land, and what did

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He do? Caused rain. He caused rain. Now, for those that hold the position that David was wrong, okay?

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And I understand, when reading that, you go, man, why didn't David ask? David should have asked, okay?

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I mean, I understand the idea, but we understand now that what David has done, he has now taken the blood guiltiness on the land, he has now punished those whose the house of Saul had done, that now

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God says, okay, the plague's lifted. It's over. The sacrifice has been accepted. Sure, and if what

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David did was wrong? Still be a drought. Yeah, that's how I understand it, okay?

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Somebody disagrees with me, I'm fine with it, but you still have to get, just a second. You still have to answer the question, well, then why was the famine lifted?

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If David was in disobedience for letting the Gibeonites make the terms, which I don't think the

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Gibeonites made the terms, I think they understood the law of Moses. That's how I understand it. Go ahead. Well, it's just interesting, too.

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I agree with you. I think they said that, and essentially how he said, neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel.

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They knew, hey, it needs to be a certain people. It has to be the power of the government that has the sword.

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Right. Yeah. And it has to be people who are related to the crime itself. Yeah. I think the

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Gibeonites understood that they didn't want David just to go grab anybody. Don't grab no Judahites. Yeah. Don't grab, yeah, don't.

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Grab people who are directly responsible, Benjamite. I was about to say that. Don't grab any old run -of -the -mill

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Benjamite. Yeah, don't do that. Don't grab Ephraimite. Don't grab any of the other tribes. It was him, it was his household.

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They're responsible, and hey, and my understanding would be all of those young men, man, they would have had spots in the army.

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And where would they, they'd have went to battle. I mean, it's just hard for me to believe that they were still in the womb.

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Yeah, they weren't boys, you know. Yeah, yeah. So, we got about two minutes.

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I don't think, I can't get through that. But we understand at this point that what

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David, however this was in his 40 years of being on the throne, wherever it was at, once again, we see

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David understanding that his role is to step in and be a mediator for the people.

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He'd see that. As being a king, he sees his people hurting, and what did he do? He steps in.

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He sees an opportunity to step into the place of the people and say, how can

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I fix this? Hey, and we're going to see because of David's sin, and just two more chapters,

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David's gotta do the same thing. I mean, David's gonna have to, when he does something very foolish, which interesting,

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Joab in no way, shape, form, or fashion is a spiritual man. But he does go, hey dude, you probably shouldn't do this.

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You probably shouldn't do this. And he says, no, no, no, we're gonna do it anyway. And incurs the wrath of God on the people.

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Once again, whose fault was it? It would be David's fault. Who pays the price?

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The people, why? Because David's their federal head. Man, it's all through Scripture.

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We have representatives, and those representatives can either fail, and then people incur the judgment of God, just like our first Adam, okay?

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Or you can have another federal head come along, like the Lord Jesus Christ, who then bears that judgment in our place, and he becomes our federal head, when we then turn from our sin and put all of our trust in what he has done, and then the wrath of God is removed from us then.

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Any questions, comments? That's where your Romans, for as by one man sin entered into death.

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By and to all men. And then by one man, justify the many. Yep. So next week, we'll finish up 21, and we'll start 22.

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22 is long. We may take it in sections.

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Do you have the tune to it? I'm gonna play it. I'm gonna bring a harmonica. And a kazoo.

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And because it's long, and some of this is, if y 'all have read through it already, some of it is like reading some of the

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Psalms already. So we'll walk through it. What's that? Yeah, we finish here,

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I'm hoping by Christmas. Maybe before. Honestly, to be honest, the way that I'm looking at it, it's probably gonna be like, we're here the last

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Sunday of December. I think that's when I'll do the introduction to the book.

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At least that's the. Is that our Christmas card? Yeah. For people that hate charts, you don't have to worry about it, no charts in here.

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No charts. No charts. No charts, yeah. No charts, we're not gonna have

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Clarence Larkin plastered all over. Yeah. Placed with no chart. So what determines what's gonna be the next book and stuff?

43:24

Is that you who determines it, or do you get it from? No, I just said, hey, you know what? Well, actually, somebody,

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I did a small Bible study in the morning, and it was just for three chapters.

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Well, they wanted two. And I said, well, you can't do that, because those come in a section, that person didn't realize, oh, wow, the book of Daniel's not written chronologically, it's written thematically.

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So then I said, that's why you gotta back up, let's do this. He says, hey, man, that really helps, just that.

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He says, have you ever thought about teaching that book? I was like, yeah, I have, but so now

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I've gotten to thinking about it, praying about it, like, you know what? I think that's what I'll do. That's what

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I'll do. I'll teach through Daniel. And it will, that'll be, it'll be longer.

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It'll be longer. I'll probably do it. It'll be an exposition. It won't be like this. It'll be an exposition, because there's just so much.

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It'll be verse by verse. I'll do it in sections, expound those. Like you can do one, two, three, and four.

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You can do, I'm sorry, you could do one, three, and four. You could do in a week's time, but two, you can't.

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When you get into seven and eight, that's chronologically how it takes place.

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Those will take some time. You get into Daniel 77's, you get into his visions, then you get to the end of the age when you get into 12.

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I mean, there's just, there's a lot to Daniel, because it's apocalyptic. Some of it's apocalyptic, some of it's narrative.

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It's just, yeah, there's just no way you can do it justice. And it's written in two different languages, right? Except the one that was written in two different languages.

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It's got some of it's in Aramaic, yeah, yeah. All right, Mike, you'll pray for us?

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I'll pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you'd be with us now as we've been in your word.

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We pray as we enter into the sanctuary that we would come in with hearts ready to praise you in spirit and in truth.

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We pray that you'd be with our brother Keith as he's prepared, and we pray, Lord, that you give him strength to preach, and we pray that you would use him to bring forth your word and power and truth.

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We pray that you'd bless us as your people, and that we would lift up the name of our