david took on goliath, according to the story, because goliath was defying god. he was defying the jewish god of israel by taunting his armies. so for david, this was more than just a battle. it was also symbolic of the power of the god of israel. david isn t even in the army. his father tells him to take lunch to his brothers, who are fighting in saul s army. and this is the picture that we get painted of the boy david, right? this punky little kid who is like, nobody s going to talk to my god like that, right? and everyone else is like, calm down, man. you don t know what you re doing. but he s willing to die to protect the honor of god.
the ark of the covenant is the splendid golden container that holds the scrolls which contain the laws of moses and which are carried by the israelites throughout their wanderings in the desert. it had two cherubim, who were thought to stand in the presence of god, mounted on it. and between those cherubim was this empty space. and the empty space was the presence of god. david has this giant ceremony, and he marches the ark of the covenant up the hill and into jerusalem. david wants this big show to show the people that they re no longer a nomadic people. the problem with it is before he moved the ark of the covenant to jerusalem, god lived with his people.
israel, we see this theme of the remnant that god chooses to do his greatest work through the leftovers, through the disadvantaged. and david s defeat of goliath was proof to this struggling, desperate people that the god who had established them was still with them. it elevated them as a nation. it allowed them to take pride in who they were as a people. this young david, when he kills goliath, he got rewarded by king saul by being appointed as the general of the army. and king saul also gave david his daughter to marry. so in a way, he brought him very close to himself. but then king saul realized later that david became too popular and a source of competition. he s the equivalent of a social media icon, right?
assertions are what made jerusalem what it is. for centuries, people who lived in and around jerusalem accepted that as a truth. so when we re reading the biblical stories, yes, we are reading the history of jerusalem. and the story of the holy city begins around 1,000 b.c. in the land of canaan. in 1,000 b.c., the major kingdoms were the egyptian kingdom to the south and the hittites to the north. this land of canaan in between, that was just a battlefield that the big boys came to duke it out on. canaan is the land that the israelites believe that god gave to them as the land that they were to inherit. the problem is, is that there were already people in canaan, the canaanites. according to the bible, god commands the israelites to kill
david and says, if i told you a story about a rich man who went and stole the sheep of a very poor man, and david says, i would kill that man. and the prophet says, your majesty, it s you. you had all of the power, and you went, and you took something away from someone who had no power, and you treated both this man and his wife with disdain and with lack of reverence. and david is terrified because he knows that god knows that he has not only committed adultery, but that he s committed murder. he disregards public outrage and forces her to marry him. it was not something that sat well with lots of people, especially in the court of david because by marrying, it created