Today's Daily Lesson comes from 2 Samuel chapter 15 verses 24 through 29:
24 Zadok was there, too, and all the Levites who were with him were carrying the ark of the covenant of God. They set down the ark of God, and Abiathar offered sacrifices until all the people had finished leaving the city.
25 Then the king said to Zadok, “Take the ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the Lord’s eyes, he will bring me back and let me see it and his dwelling place again. 26 But if he says, ‘I am not pleased with you,’ then I am ready; let him do to me whatever seems good to him.”
27 The king also said to Zadok the priest, “Do you understand? Go back to the city with my blessing. Take your son Ahimaaz with you, and also Abiathar’s son Jonathan. You and Abiathar return with your two sons. 28 I will wait at the fords in the wilderness until word comes from you to inform me.” 29 So Zadok and Abiathar took the ark of God back to Jerusalem and stayed there.
These chapters about the split in David's royal house tell a horrific story full of lust, rape, incest, murder, mayhem, intrigue and will to power.
Reading this kind of thing can make our minor family disfunctions seem not so bad.
But then again these are human stories. And no family is immune to savage split and violence. And all the sons' sins are connected with those of the father. He sowed the wind; they reaped the whirlwind.
But there is a redemptive quality in David seen here in today's Lesson, reflective of his own painfully humbled knowledge that though he will have to fight his own son for the throne and that it was his own failures which caused the War.
So no, David will not bring the ark of God with him out of the City. For God is more holy than the War to come and either of the two camps which shall fight it.
NOTE: We are reading the Bible through this year. Tomorrow's Lesson will come from somewhere in: Psalms 3-4, 12-13, 28, and 55.
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