to the book's three main characters: Samuel, Saul and David and

then also to the book's literary design which first introduced Samuel and then

traced the rise and fall of king Saul in contrast to the rise of king David.

2nd Samuel tells the story of David as Israel's King and in two movements;

there's a season of success and a blessing, followed by a huge moral failure and then sad consequences.

And then the book ends with this well-crafted conclusion that reflects back on the good and the bad in David's life,

generating hope for a future king to come from his line.

So 2nd Samuel picks up after Saul's death and David surprises everyone by composing this

long poem where he laments the death of the very man who tried to murder him.

And so once again the author is presenting David's humility and compassion;

he's a man who grieves the death even of his own enemies.

After this, David experiences a season of success and God's blessing. All of the Israelite

tribes they come to David then they ask him to unify all the tribes as

their king so the first thing David does as king, is to go to the city of

Jerusalem, he conquers it, and he establishes it as Israel's capital city

which he renames as Zion. And from there David goes on and he wins many battles

and expands Israel's territory. Now after making Jerusalem the political capital

of Israel he wants to make it their religious capital as well and so he has

the Ark of the Covenant moved into the city and then in 2nd Samuel 7, he

tells God now that Israel has a permanent home he thinks that God's

presence should also get a permanent house so he asks if he can build a

temple for the God of Israel but God says to David: "Thank you for that thought but

actually I'm going to build you a house, a dynasty." Now 2nd Samuel 7, this is a

key chapter for understanding the storyline of the whole Bible because God

here makes a promise to David that from his royal line will come a future king

who's going to build God's temple here on earth and set up an eternal kingdom

and it's this

messianic promise to David that gets picked up and developed more in the Book of

Psalms and also in the books of the prophets and it's this king that gets

connected to God's promise to Abraham. The future messianic kingdom will be how

God brings His blessing to all of the nations and it's right here in the midst

of all this divine blessing that things go horribly wrong. David makes a fatal

mistake. Not fatal for him, but for a man named Uriah. One of David´s prized

soldiers. So from his rooftop David sees Uriah´s wife Batsheba, bathing. David

finds her, he sleeps with her, gets her pregnant and then he tries to cover the whole

thing up by having Uriah assassinated and then marrying her. It is just horrible. So when

David´s confronted by the prophet Nathan about all of this, he immediately owns up

to what he's done. He is broken, he repents. He asks God to forgive him and God does

forgive him but, God doesn't erase the consequences of David's decisions. And so

as a result of this horrible choice David's family, his kingdom, and all falls

apart and makes this section a tragic story, much like Saul´s downfall.

So David´s sons end up repeating his own mistakes but in even more tragic ways so

Amnon sexually abuses his sister Tamar and then their brother Absalom

finds out about all of this and has Amnon assassinated and then Absalom goes

and he hatches the secret plan to oust his father David from power and he

launches this full-scale rebellion and so for a second time David is forced to

flee from his own home and go hide in the wilderness, except this time he is

not an innocent man. The rebellion ends when David's son is murdered. And it

breaks David's heart and so once again he laments over the very man who tried to

kill him.

David´s last days find him back on his throne but as a broken man

man, he's wounded by the sad consequences of his sin. The book concludes with a

well-crafted epilogue. With stories that are out of chronological order, but they

have this really cool symmetrical literary design. So the outer pair of

stories come from earlier in David's reign and they compared the failures of

Saul and then of David, and how each of them hurt other people through their bad

decisions. The next inner pair of stories are about David and his band of mighty

men, who went about fighting the Philistines and what's interesting is

that both sections have a story of David's weakness in battle, so in contrast

to the victorious David of chapters 1 through 9, here we see a vulnerable David, who is

dependent on others for help. The center of the epilogue has two poems that act

like memoirs, and David reflects back on his life and he remembers times when God

graciously rescued him from danger, and he sees these as moments where God was

faithful to His covenant promise to him and to his family. Both poems conclude by

looking back onto the hope of God's promise of a future king who will build

that eternal kingdom. Now these poems and then God´s promise also connect back to

Hannah´s poem that opened the book. And so these key passages from the beginning

now the middle and the end of the book bring the book's themes all together.

Despite Saul and David´s evil, God remained at work moving forward His redemptive

purposes. And God opposed David and Saul´s arrogance, but He exalted David when he

humbled himself. And so the future hope of this book reaches far beyond David

himself. It looks to the future to the messianic king who will one day bring

God's kingdom and blessing to all of the nations. And that´s what the book of Samuel

is all about.