Wednesday Bible Study: Bad King

Psalms 51 and 52 refer to incidents in 2 Samuel and 1 Samuel, respectively, in which David does not exactly earn his crown. As with all the psalms of David, they were written long after he was dead -- they ' re actually fan fiction, or commentaries on Samuel. Just as a reminder, Psalm 51 refers to 2 Samuel 11-12 in which David rapes a woman named Bathsheba and gets her pregnant. To try to cover it up he summons her husband Uriah, a general, back from the front, but Uriah is loyal to his troops and won ' t come, so David has him murdered. He then marries Bathsheba. That is definitely not nice. God sent Nathan to let David know this behavior was not approved. The psalm, however, invokes a concept of original sin. It ' s not that David is especially psychopathic, it ' s that we ' re born in sin. Once again, this psalm says that God doesn ' t really desire sacrifice (verse 16), which is a total contradiction of the central essence of the Torah and Deuteronomistic history, and indeed of the very story of which this is a part, David ' s establishment of Zion. It ' s also hard to make sense of in the context in which it was actually composed, because the rebuilding of the Temple was essential to the return from exile and reestablishment of the Kingdom of Judah.The incident in Psalm 52 has come up before, in which the scribe appears to misspell Ahimelech as Abimelech. King Saul was trying to have his rival David murdered, so David fled and sought refuge with the priest Ahimelech. Doe...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs