0 2 Samuel : Family Values

2 Samuel : Family Values (21)

  1. "David went up thither, and his two wives also." 2:2
  2. David, by this time, has at least seven wives (Michal, Ahinoam, Abigail, Maacah, Haggith, Abital, and Ehlah), and he was just getting started. 3:2-5
  3. David says, "deliver me my wife Michal, which I espoused to me for a hundred foreskins of the Philistines." Well, he actually paid with two hundred foreskins (see 1 Samuel 18:27). 3:14
  4. Michal was bought by David with 200 Philistine foreskins (1 Sam 18:25-27), then she was "given" to Phatiel (1 Sam 25:44), and then "taken back" by David. Poor Phatiel must have loved her dearly since he "went along weeping behind her." 3:15-16
  5. "And David took him more concubines and wives." (How many? God knows I suppose, but he doesn't tell us in the Bible.) 5:13
  6. King David dances nearly naked in front of God and everybody. When Michal criticizes him for exposing himself, God punishes her by having "no child unto the day of her death." Although 21:8 says that she had five sons (which were sacrificed to God by David to stop God from starving people to death). 6:14-23
  7. David sees a woman (Bathsheba) bathing and likes what he sees. so he sends for her and commits adultery with her "for she was purified from her uncleanness." She conceives and bears a son (of course). 11:2-5
  8. David tells Joab (his captain) to send Bathsheba's husband (Uriah) to "the forefront of the hottest battle ... that he may be smitten and die." In this way, David gets another wife. 11:15, 11:17-27
  9. God gave the wives of King Saul to David. 12:7-8
  10. God is angry at David for having Uriah killed. As a punishment, he will have David's wives raped by his neighbor while everyone else watches. It turns out that the "neighbor" that God sends to do his dirty work is David's own son, Absalom (16:22). 12:11-12
  11. To punish David for having Uriah killed, God kills Bathsheba's baby boy. 12:14-18
  12. After Bathsheba's baby is killed by God, David comforts her by going "in unto her." She conceives and bears another son (Solomon). 12:24
  13. Ammon (David's son) says to his half-sister Tamar, "Come lie with me, my sister." But she resists, so he rapes her and then sends her away. Tamar, knowing that she now belongs to him (since she was a virgin), expects him to marry her, but he refuses. 13:1-22
  14. "When king David heard of all these things, he was very wroth."
    The New Revised Standard Version adds, "but he would not punish his son Amnon, because he loved him, for he was his firstborn."
    David loved Ammon "because he was his firstborn" (good parents love their firstborn sons more than their other kids). As the Brick Testament suggests, he probably said something like, "Oh well, I guess firstborns are entitled to one free incestuous rape." 13:21
  15. "And the king left ten women, which were concubines, to keep the house."
    David left Jerusalem because he was afraid that his son Absalom was going to kill him. But he left his concubines to fend for themselves. 15:16
  16. Absalom "went in unto his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel." This was according the God's plan as announced in 12:11-12. 16:21-22
  17. Absalom "went in unto his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel." This was according the God's plan as announced in 2 Sam.12:11-12. 16:21-22
  18. To punish his ten concubines for being raped by his son, Absalom (See 16:21-22), David refuses to ever again have sex with them and forces them to "keep house" for the rest of their lives. 20:3
  19. To appease God and end the famine that was caused by his predecessor (Saul), David agrees to have two of Saul's sons and five of his grandsons killed and hung up "unto the Lord." 21:6-9
  20. "They hanged them in the hill before the LORD." 21:9
  21. "They gathered the bones of them that were hanged ... And after that God was intreated for the land."
    God stopped the famine after Saul's two sons and five grandsons were killed and hung up for him. 21:13-14

Copyright © 1999-2024
The Skeptic's Annotated Bible

Send comments to Steve Wells
at swwells(at)gmail.com