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2 Samuel 5 of 24

2 Samuel 5

A city no tribe had ever held becomes the capital of a united kingdom because it belongs to no tribe at all.

Summary

All the tribes of Israel come to David at Hebron and acknowledge him: 'We are thy bone and thy flesh.' They remind him that even under Saul, David was the one who led Israel out and brought them in, and that the Lord promised him he would be shepherd of Israel and prince over it. The elders anoint David king over all Israel. David is thirty years old when he begins to reign and reigns forty years in total: seven and a half in Hebron over Judah, thirty-three in Jerusalem over all Israel and Judah. He marches to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, who tell him their blind and lame can repel him — a taunt that becomes proverbial. Joab leads the assault, apparently entering through the water shaft, and the city falls. David builds it up from the Millo inward. He makes a treaty with Hiram king of Tyre, who sends cedar and carpenters and stonemasons to build David a house. David takes more concubines and wives from Jerusalem and begets more children.

The Philistines, hearing that David has been anointed king over all Israel, come up to search for him. They spread out in the valley of Rephaim. David inquires of the Lord: 'Shall I go up?' The Lord says go; David attacks from Baal-perazim and routs them so completely that their abandoned idols are burned. They come up again and spread in the same valley. David inquires again. This time the instruction is different: do not go up directly, but circle behind them and wait opposite the mulberry trees. When David hears the sound of marching in the tops of the trees, then move, for the Lord has gone out before you to smite the Philistine army. David does so and drives the Philistines from Geba to Gezer. The chapter's twice-repeated pattern — David asking, God answering, Israel winning — establishes the posture of the first half of the book: David succeeds when he seeks direction rather than assuming it.

Appears
David Joab
Themes
Consolidation of Power Divine Election Jerusalem
All 24 chapters — click to jump
  1. 2 Samuel 1Chapter 1 is the hinge between 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel.
  2. 2 Samuel 2Chapter 2 opens the period of civil war that will occupy much of the first half of the book.
  3. 2 Samuel 3Chapter 3 is one of the most politically complex chapters in the book.
  4. 2 Samuel 4Chapter 4 closes the civil war with a brief, ugly episode.
  5. 2 Samuel 5Chapter 5 is the pivotal chapter of the book's first half.
  6. 2 Samuel 6Chapter 6 is one of the most dramatically charged chapters in 2 Samuel, covering two episodes that frame the ark's arrival in Jerusalem.
  7. 2 Samuel 7Chapter 7 is the theological centre of the entire David narrative and one of the most consequential passages in the Hebrew Bible for later Jewish and Christian thought.
  8. 2 Samuel 8Chapter 8 reads differently from everything around it.
  9. 2 Samuel 9Chapter 9 is the chapter the Court History uses to establish one key dimension of David's character before the crisis arrives.
  10. 2 Samuel 10Chapter 10 establishes the military context of the Bathsheba episode.
  11. 2 Samuel 11Chapter 11 is the turning point of 2 Samuel and one of the most consequential chapters in biblical narrative.
  12. 2 Samuel 12Chapter 12 contains the most famous confrontation in the book.
  13. 2 Samuel 13Chapter 13 is the first fulfilment of Nathan's sentence in chapter 12.
  14. 2 Samuel 14Chapter 14 covers the three years in which David longs for Absalom but will not recall him, and Joab's intervention to change that.
  15. 2 Samuel 15Chapter 15 is the emotional nadir of the first movement of the Absalom crisis.
  16. 2 Samuel 16Chapter 16 covers three encounters as David makes his way out of Jerusalem.
  17. 2 Samuel 17Chapter 17 is the intelligence chapter of the Absalom revolt and turns on a moment of competitive counsel.
  18. 2 Samuel 18Chapter 18 is the emotional climax of 2 Samuel.
  19. 2 Samuel 19Chapter 19 covers David's return to Jerusalem and the political settlements it requires.
  20. 2 Samuel 20Chapter 20 is the coda to the Absalom crisis.
  21. 2 Samuel 21Chapter 21 opens the appendix section of 2 Samuel — chapters 21-24 are not chronological narrative but supplementary materials: two episodes of famine and plague bracketing two poems and two hero lists.
  22. 2 Samuel 22Chapter 22 is an extended psalm, found also as Psalm 18 in the Psalter, which the editors of 2 Samuel have placed near the end of the book as David's retrospective meditation on his life.
  23. 2 Samuel 23Chapter 23 contains two distinct sections.
  24. 2 Samuel 24Chapter 24 is the second appendix episode bracketing the poems of chapters 22-23, and it closes the book on an unexpected note.
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2 Samuel 4
Next · Chapter 6 →
2 Samuel 6
The book itself
Summary & story
What 2 Samuel is, why it matters.
Analysis
Themes
Power, consequence, grief, the dynastic promise, and the realism of the prose.
Who's who
David's court
The household of a king who has everything and gives most of it away.

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