An Introduction to II Samuel

At the end of the book of Genesis, Jacob and seventy members of his family migrate to Egypt.  Centuries later, a nation led by Moses leaves Egypt, guided by YHWH, the One God of Creation who has chosen this nation to represent Him. YHWH feeds the nation in the desert, implements a covenant and guides them into Canaan.  In Canaan, Joshua leads the nation to a mostly successful conquest but at the death of Joshua, the nation is still in conflict with various tribes of Canaanite. The book of Judges describes the chaos that follows. That book ends with a disorganized and decadent collection of tribes fighting with both outsiders and themselves.

The scroll of Samuel, in the Hebrew TaNaKh describes the passage from chaotic tribal disputes to the reign of King Saul and then to the dramatic reign of the charismatic king David. Eventually the scroll of Samuel was separated into two parts, First and Second Samuel.  First Samuel covers the transition from leadership by the judge-prophet Samuel to the first kingdom, the reign of King Saul. As Saul's reign decays, the shepherd-poet David rises in power and influence. The book of I Samuel ends with the death of Saul while David waits in the wings.

The second half of the scroll of Samuel tells the story of David's reign. The first half of II Samuel describes David's reign as a powerful poet-warrior, a man of humility, devoted to YHWH. But as David gains power, his humility and devotion wane and his reign enters a time of moral decay and strife. This king, one who seeks God above all else, commits adultery then covers up his affair ad kills one of his soldiers. After that follows family strife and civil war.

Historians believe David's death occurred about 970 BC. (See this Wikipedia page on the Kings of Israel and Judah.) The scroll of Samuel (1 & 2 Samuel) then covers about a century (1070-970 BC) in the history of the young nation of Israel.

Outline

II Samuel, the second half of the scroll of Samuel, covers David's reign in the first twenty chapters and then ends with a four chapter epilogue. In the epilogue is a song of David, a beautiful bookend to Hannah's song of I Samuel 2.

The height of the book occurs in chapter 7, where God promises to create an eternal dynasty in the line of David. At this time Israel is centered (finally) in Jerusalem (which has just been conquered by David) and there are plans to build a temple (eventually accomplished by his son, Solomon) and the twelve tribes are united.  

Shortly after this, however, David's humility is replaced by kingly arrogance; the humble shepherd enjoys the power and riches of being king and with that arrogance begins a fall. In chapter 11, David stays home from war, brings into the palace the wife of one of his soldiers and has an affair with her. When she announces she is pregnant, David kills her husband and then marries her.  This corruption cannot be kept secret and the effects of these sins ripples through David's family, leading eventually to civil war. At the end of chapter 20, David has recovered from most of these conflicts and remains king.

Chapters 21-24 form an epilogue of additional stories about David: two stories of conflict, two worship songs of David and two accounts of the "mighty men" he drew to himself. (These are set up in a chiastic structure, A B C C' B' A'.) At the end of this book, we are then ready for the scroll of Kings, which begins with David's death and then covers some four centuries of kings that followed David.

Problems and Questions

Rabbinical tradition gives three authors for the scroll of Samuel, attributing to Samuel everything up to the account of his death and then the remainder to the prophets Gad and Nathan. (See I Chronicles 29: 29-30 for support for this hypothesis.)  It is likely that the final scroll was completed by a later editor.

As in previous books, there are some questions on the Old Testament use of large numbers.  (I summarize what I know of that in the Sunday essay, The Problem of Large Numbers in the Old Testament.)

The details described in the scroll of Samuel occurred over three thousand years ago. They were probably originally written down in paleo-Hebrew and then, after the Babylonian captivity, copied in what we now call biblical Hebrew.  The Masoretic Text and the Septuagint copies of the scroll differ significantly in various places. A scroll of Samuel in the Qumran Caves gives some insight into these discrepancies.

Resources and References

My practice is to read through the text from the New International Version (NIV), copied into the blog and italicized in blue.  At the head of each blue paragraph of text I place a short title; after the text I place my thoughts or comments in black.  I begin this process with my own reactions and thoughts and then supplement these comments with gleanings from a commentary or two.

The real goal of this blog is to force me to read every verse thoughtfully. I hope that you, too, read the passages thoughtfully!   Feel free to disagree -- or to react in other ways! (I place hyperlinks in pink, created so that one can click on a link and see the linked site open in another window... and go down a rabbit hole if you wish!)

For the book of II Samuel I have found two commentaries helpful. 

• Robert Alter has an excellent and enjoyable translation and commentary called The David Story.  
• I have also used a commentary by Ronald F. Youngblood found in the third volume of the Expositor's Bible Commentary.

Both of these sources cover both I and II Samuel. In addition, in the online commentaries provided by EasyEnglishBible, is an online commentar on 2 Samuel.  (The Easy English Bible commentaries are easy to read, with deliberately simple language intended for those for whom English is a second language. The Old Testament text is included in the commentary.) 

In addition to these resources, there is a Wikipedia article on the scroll of Samuel and an online article from the Jewish Encyclopedia. A Bible Project video is here.

The book of Second Samuel is the second of four books on the kings of Israel. It focuses almost exclusively on the dramatic reign of David, of his kingdom, political intrigue and worship. His reign in many ways represents the best of Jewish culture.  

Once we have finished studying David, although we are ready for the scroll of Kings, in this blog we will digress to look at Book I of Psalms, worship songs many of which were written by this greatest of Jewish leaders.