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38. David becomes
King in Israel.
During these events,
the Philistines waged war with Israel and fought a battle against them.
The battle turned out badly. Israel was overwhelmed and defeated.
Jonathan and two more of Saul's sons were killed. When Saul could no
longer save himself before the king of Israel surrendered alive to the
enemy, he threw himself on his own sword. So Saul and Jonathan, his
valiant son, died in one day.
David sat with his brave men, his rescued wives and children on the
burning place of Ziklag. Perhaps they were already beginning to build a
little again for the first need, and they were looking forward to the
long time until everything would be as it was. But suddenly a runaway
comes from the battle and brings Saul's royal crown and his royal
armband to the hero David, thinking that he will receive a messenger's
reward so that he will have enough to last him a lifetime. According to
him, Saul would not have been dead after he had fallen on his sword.
Saul said to him, ‘Come to me and kill me, for my life is still in me.’
‘So I came to him,’ said the messenger, ’and killed him and took the
crown from his head and the armband from his arm and brought it to you.’
David seized his clothes and tore them in terror and grief, but the
messenger who had brought him the message of death and the king's crown
was cut down by one of his men because he confessed that he had killed
the king. ‘Your blood,’ he said, “be upon you, for your mouth has
testified against you,” and David was right in this: man should never
touch the king's life. The king's life is in God's hands!
David left the burning place of Ziklag and returned to his homeland with
his six hundred men and came to Hebron. There his compatriots, the men
of Judah, anointed him king, and then the other tribes also paid homage
to him. This is the descendant of the pious Ruth, who picked ears of
corn in the fields of Bethlehem. He became something. The father of
David was Jesse or Jesse; the father of Jesse was Obed, whom Ruth bore
to Boaz. So the lineage of poor Ruth came to the royal throne. God
repaid her love to her descendants even after her death. But David is
not yet the promised one in whom all the families of the earth will be
blessed. Things still have to get bad before the promised one comes.
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