Remember that eulogy David proclaimed over himself before he died? Theologically suspect—because it ignored divine grace and basically says God rewarded him for being righteous.
We should know better than to trust any eulogy to give us a full picture of a person’s life, but somehow we accept David’s words as God’s view too. We don’t examine his motives, but interpret his actions as just—for that’s precisely what David was saying when he announced his house was right with God—without ever questioning if this is self-justification. David wasn’t only claiming he was just, he claimed it for his entire house—his dynasty. Yet within a few years, Solomon would be described in exactly the same terms as the cruel, slave-driving Pharaoh who oppressed the Israelites.
Unfortunately, we not only offer David the benefit of the doubt, we do so for those modern leaders who proclaim themselves the inheritors of his mantle. Further, we paint both David and his current counterparts as role models to emulate when we should be troubled by many of his actions. We adulate and idolise him, insisting he’s a man after God’s own heart, never wondering if that early assessment remained into old age. We simply assume it did.
Here are a few of David’s dubious actions that, in my experience, are never ever questioned. Instead, they’re held up as exemplars of godly, praiseworthy behaviour.
- Bringing the Ark to Jerusalem and dancing before the Lord
- Buying a threshing floor as the site of a future temple
- Conquering the fortress of Zion but not giving it to the tribe in whose territory it was
There’s considerably more, but let’s focus on the first one. Ever since the Ark had been captured in battle with the Philistines, it had been separated from the Tabernacle. For over half a century, it had been at Kiriath Jearim while the Tabernacle had been at Gibeon. Saul had moved his capital to be with the Tabernacle; David moved the Ark and housed it in a Tabernacle of his own making. Only when the Temple was completed was the original Tabernacle at Gibeon moved to Jerusalem.
This is about political power and a posture of the heart. Do we go to God or do we ask God to come to us? Do we accept Jesus’ invitation to come into the wound in His side under His heart, there to be born again, or do we ask Him into our own heart?
The difference between the two comes down to retaining the exercise of power in our lives or else surrendering our structures of control. Generally we’ve been taught to keep our autonomy and only allow Jesus partial access to our heart. But unless we are in Him and He is in us, we are not covenantally joined to Him.
David famously danced before the Lord. He was exhibitionist and indecent. The dance, apparently, was more in line with the wild attention-seeking of the Phoenician deity Baal Marqod, lord of the dance, since ‘marqod’ is the word used in 1 Chronicles 15:29 to describe what his wife Michal saw. Now she was wrong to despise him, and wrong to confront him in contempt, but she was not wrong to speak truth to power.
David was so angry with her he insulted her entire family and then never had anything to do with her again. Scripture doesn’t say Michal was barren; it says she never had children—letting us know just how David treated her. He wasn’t exactly the most forgiving of men, as becomes evident in his deathbed instructions to eliminate a few people who’d aggravated him in life.
Now David was, so we may surmise, more than a little concerned about what Michal had said. She probably wasn’t the only one with the impression he was shameless. Brazen nudity was bad enough but, in front of the Ark of the Covenant, it was absolutely forbidden. God had commanded the priests to enter the Holy Place on a ramp, not on steps, lest they even accidentally expose themselves. By wearing an ephod, David had acted as a priest, so this commandment applied. Furthermore, the precise reason his predecessor Saul had lost any right to dynastic succession was because he’d acted as a priest. No doubt the very words David yelled at Michal reminded him of why he was king and not one of her brothers. He’d have had to have been worried about what God would do. He would have known God wasn’t unfair or unjust, so if Saul lost any chance of his house ruling after him for the offering of a sacrifice, how would He view David’s dancing and his sacrifice of a bull and a calf after every sixth step?
It’s almost as if David suddenly realised there was a way around the problem. He was a king and, yes, he’d acted as a priest—but unlike Saul, he was king in Jerusalem. He couldn’t possibly claim legitimacy as a Levite, but what about the priest-king of Salem mentioned in the Torah? At this point, one of the great messianic prophecies, Psalm 110, was apparently written.
The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at My right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’
The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty sceptre. Rule in the midst of your enemies!…
The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind, ‘You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.’
Now it’s all very well for us to know that, in retrospect, this psalm was forthtelling the priestly kingship of the Messiah a thousand years in advance. The question is: what did the composer think he was saying? Who wrote it?
Was it originally by David or to David? The same grammatical construction is in the header as in ‘to my Lord’, so it may well have been a song for and to David by one of the choirs he appointed. The first-mentioned Lord is Yahweh because it explicitly says so, but the second lord, until the time of Jesus’ provocative question about it, would have been understood as David. It is interpreted that way by many Jews today.
Some ancient composer apparently created a panegyric for the Levites to sing at the new Tabernacle of David. The original meaning of the lyrics, as commonly rather than prophetically understood, was that Yahweh had invited the Levites’ master to sit beside Him until all his enemies were defeated.
Naturally, this master would be thought of as David himself, not as someone yet unborn. The psalm publicly solves the problem of acting as a priest, should anyone query why David hadn’t been subjected to the same rules as Saul. The standards of the Aaronic priesthood don’t apply to the king of Salem. Melchizedek was a priest-king and David is following that ordinance.
Having the prophecy that the priesthood is forever, David then appointed his own sons as priests. The legitimacy of this actions as described in 2 Samuel 8:18 is questionable at best.
God, in His grace, eventually eased David’s mind by promising him a house that would endure, and an everlasting kingdom. But, as time passed, David became increasingly afraid of God. (1 Chronicles 21:30) He was no longer the fearless, faith-filled man who trusted in God’s deliverance; he was instead afraid to go to the Tabernacle at Gibeon and meet with God there. No wonder he wanted a Temple in Jerusalem: it would not only be a political statement attesting to the glories of his reign, it solved the problem of his own insecurity and reluctance to face God in His sanctuary.
In the natural, David’s kingdom was spilt within two generations into the north and the south; and the remnant kingdom only lasted until the Babylonian exile. In the natural, the priesthood of his sons and their descendants has a great cloud over it. Why couldn’t King Uzziah offer prayer in the Temple without being stricken with leprosy for his presumption, if he was in the line of Melchizedek? None of God’s promises to David see their outworking in the natural; only in Jesus, in the supernatural realm, do they make sense. In fact, what happened to Saul’s line happened also to David’s and in the same timeframe. Only one of Saul’s sons ruled after him before the headship of the family basically reverted to the leadership of a single tribe. The same thing happened to David: only Solomon ruled after him before the kingship basically reverted to the leadership of a single tribe. God is not unjust: He does not punish one person and reward another for the same action. David misinterpreted God’s promises to him.
Today many leaders, like David, have a heart-posture that requires God to come to them, rather than that they go to God. They not only prophesy but do not submit it for interpretation. We not only have to forgive them, we have to forgive David for role-modelling this leadership style.
This is Grace Drops and I’m Anne Hamilton. May your forgiveness of authority be empowered by Jesus of Nazareth, Yeshua Ha Mashiach.
Thank you to Lorna Skinner of www.riversofmusic.co.uk for the background music.
Elijah’s mantle is discussed in The Elijah Tapestry: John 1 and 21: Mystery, Majesty and Mathematics in John’s Gospel #1.
Joseph’s mantle is featured The Summoning of Time: John 2 and 20: Mystery, Majesty and Mathematics in John’s Gospel #2.
Moses’ mantle—and Reuben’s mantle—will be featured in The Lustral Waters: John 3 and 19: Mystery, Majesty and Mathematics in John’s Gospel #3. Available late 2024.
David’s mantle will be covered in The Inviolable Kingdom: John 4 and 18: Mystery, Majesty and Mathematics in John’s Gospel #4. Available 2025.
Please get in touch through the contact form at Armour Books if you are in the US, UK or Australia and there are availability/price issues at the retailer for any of these volumes.