As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
The study of King David is one which is a dichotomy of evil, and the good which will arise from it, when the hand of God is directing the situation.
For example, the people of Israel wanted a leader, instead of God. So God gave them the leader they deserved, the fearful, hard hearted and hard headed Saul, who was swayed by the people, and soon enough God rejected the choice God had made for the people.
This then entered David the shepherd boy, who with God's Grace became a great warrior, played the harp to soothe Saul when he was having depression fits, and by Saul's own cleverness to get David killed, David instead in slaughtering Philistines for their foreskins, became son in law of the king, as a wedding dowery.
David then became a hunted man, and refused to kill Saul, and lamented a great deal when he humiliated Saul, while Saul was relieving himself, David snuck in and cut off his robe.
It all rendered down to David was to be king, and Saul or his sons not. The drama of God involved again, had the Philistines marching on Israel, Saul assembling, David with the Philistines, but God moving the Philistines to send David home, so when Saul and his sons were killed, David's hands would be clean in this bloodshed, and it would not be stated that David murderd Saul and his sons.
That is not part of the Bible explanation, but is the reality of what God did.
There was then a war between the house of Saul and David, and Joab who was David's cousin, eventually by a ruse killed the Israelite commander, Abner.
Joab is blamed by David for killing an honest man, but we had here a General of the Army, who just took up sexually with one of Saul's concubines and threatened Saul's weak son on the throne. That kind of man would be king and he needed to die, and Joab's hand killed him, and David blamed him, but Joab saved kingdom and God's Will was accomplished.
Then there was the issue of David summoning the wife of one of his mighty men, Uriah, and having sex with Bathsheba, getting her pregnant, and trying to cover it up in having Uriah summoned to be home and have sex with his wife.
Uriah refused because his men were in battle, so again Joab appeared and took orders from David to have Uriah killed in battle.
David then married Bathsheba, whose child died, which again is God's hand moving, as there would always be contention that this might be Uriah's child, so it fell to the second born Solomon to be king.
David had many sons by different women, and older sons for the throne than the lately Solomon. God's punishment for David was convenient, in it killed a contending son off by another son for raping his sister. Absolom led a rebellion, and Joab disobeyed the king's order to spare this conspirator and killed him.
During all of this Joab's younger brother was following Amasa, the general of the army in revolt, and Amasa killed the boy after warning him. This again when David was brought back to the throne, David in order to secure power made Amasa general of the army in supplanting Joab, who being a kindred of David, but had not headed off the rebellion as he had brought Absolom back, went out and killed Amasa, thereby ending again another pretender to the Davidic throne.
When David died, another of David's sons was about to murder Solomon, and David had left instructions concerning the intrigues of the kingdom, and Solomon killed the pretender, and then sent out and killed Joab.
Even one of the last of Saul's kindreds was removed, as when the revolt took place, a crippled son of Saul and another named Shemi, both did not flee with David, pointing to they were hoping to gain the throne again. David forgave both, but Shemi was killed by Solomon when he left Jerusalem to look for a slave who had run away, and Shemi was under house arrest.
I ponder a great deal in how the death of Nabal the husband of David's first wife, was convenient for David in making him wealthy, as God struck him dead. I ponder a great deal of all the deaths for which others were blamed, but in the background of all of them were the realities of protecting the throne of Jesus the Christ, which David held.
Everyone of those people had to die, but not at the hand of David, and they all did die, and David was kept blood guiltless, but it is a reality that what would be murder, was often enough that of a state criminal, or after David was dead, a way of cleaning the slate so the Israelites would not hold a grudge against his family.
There was a regicide of Saul's house after the rebellion in which a drought took place for 3 years, and David inquired of the Lord, and God said it was because Saul had tried to genocide the Gibeonites who were not Israelites, but lived among them by a ruse of covenant they engineered in the conquest of Israel by Joshua.
God said it was due to Saul's sin, and when David asked the Gibeonites what they desired, it was the heads of Saul's family, to which David complied in allowing them to kill Saul's sons.
The mother of some of the boys, chased predators from the bodies, and David upon hearing this, took the bones of Saul and his sons who died in battle, along with these scapegoats and buried them all in the tomb of Saul's father, again a generous act which made David look very kind.
In the end, Saul's daughter, mocked David for his dancing before the Lord, and the woman had been given to another man while David fled, and she was put away as a widow in captivity, cutting Saul off from the throne forever.
It was all designed by God, but it is a point of convenince in all of this, that David could rightly claim innocence, but even in sin with Bathsheba, God was clearing the decks for David and his household for the throne.
I judge incorrectly, as I am not God, but Jonathan who was Saul's son, did not get a fair deal in this in being murdered, but allowing him to live would have divided the kingdom. Joab might have seized the throne from Solomon as he was kindred of David and general of the army. It all works out, but in human morality, it appears unjust, but what we do not see is that worse things would have taken place if these worse things had not been carried out.
It is the way of looking at life in how God works things out. It is always Right and Just, as we do not witness the entire picture in all ways.
It is just the way things are.
agtG
