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2 Samuel 6 of 24

2 Samuel 6

The king of Israel dances before the Lord with all his might, and his wife watches from a window with contempt.

Summary

David gathers thirty thousand chosen men and goes down to retrieve the ark of God, which has been at Baale of Judah. They carry it on a new cart, Uzzah and Ahio driving. At the threshing floor of Nacon the oxen stumble; Uzzah puts out his hand to steady the ark and is struck dead by God for his error. David is afraid, angry at the interruption, and calls the place Perez-uzzah. He declines to bring the ark to the city of David and leaves it at the house of Obed-edom the Gittite instead. It stays there three months, during which the Lord blesses Obed-edom and all his household. When David hears of this, he goes to bring the ark up to Jerusalem with joy, sacrificing an ox and a fatling every six paces. He dances before the Lord with all his might, wearing a linen ephod. Shouting and trumpets accompany the ark into the city, and David distributes bread, meat, and raisin cakes to the whole assembly.

When David returns to bless his household, Michal, daughter of Saul, comes out to meet him. Her words are sharp: how glorious was the king today, who uncovered himself today in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself. David's reply is equally sharp: before the Lord, who chose him over your father and all his house, to appoint him ruler over Israel — before the Lord will he play. And he will be yet more vile than this. The handmaids of which she spoke will honour him. The chapter ends with a single, desolate sentence: Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death. The barrenness is the text's verdict on her position. The ark's arrival in Jerusalem marks the completion of the political consolidation; Michal's rebuke and its consequence mark the final severing of any debt to the house of Saul.

Appears
David
Themes
Worship and Celebration The Ark The Anointed King
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 5
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2 Samuel 7
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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