Sunday School | David - 2 Samuel 21

The last time we were together, we were in 2 Samuel chapter 19, and we're skipping chapter 20 because there's almost no David in it. So we're just skipping over 20. I want to get back to David's life, and we're going to be in chapter 21. If you want to turn in your Bibles to 2 Samuel 21, you can. However, we're not going to get there for a few minutes. We're going to actually begin in Joshua chapter 9. So you can go to either one.

But here's the thing. I think I may be misremembering something, but I think that 2 Samuel chapter 21 is the weirdest chapter in the David narrative. And by weirdest, I mean, what we're going to do today is I'm going to do my best to explain it to you, give you the background and the history so you understand the storyline. But some stuff is going to happen seemingly with the approval of God, seemingly—not even with his approval, but at his hand—and I can't resolve it for you. It's weird.

It's good to see you. It's weird. It's going to be weird as we talk about it, and then you're going to leave and you're going to be like, "Man, Tim did a crummy job of making that all go away." Because I can't make it go away. It's just weird. But we're going to take a look at it.

The Gibeonites

So what we're going to do is look at the Gibeonites. Does anybody have any sense of who the Gibeonites are? Do they exist in your brain under a category? They're the ones who tricked their way into the promised land, into a covenant? That's exactly right.

And so, by the way, I'm going to try to—we continue to get feedback every week that I can't hear anybody when they're talking. So when you speak, speak as if there's people way over there that can't hear you. And then if I forget to repeat them, just wave at me and I'll remember to repeat it so you guys can hear what's going on.

So here's the deal. If you go back to Joshua chapter 9—well, first of all, what's Joshua? If you just randomly guessed what's happening in Joshua chapter 9, give me a stab in the dark. What's going on there?

Joshua is the record of the people of God, the Hebrews—I don't know if we're calling them the Israelites yet, but the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—coming into the Promised Land. And when they come into the Promised Land, they wage war. This is all under Joshua. Joshua has replaced Moses as leader. And everywhere they go, they have a battle and they win. And then they go to the next town, and they win, and they go to the next town, and they win there. And eventually, the word gets out that, man, these guys are just mopping up. They're just sweeping through and just taking over everything.

And so a group of people known as the Gibeonites catch wind of this and realize, man, we're next on the list. And so they have to do something. They're desperate, and they want to somehow make peace with the Hebrews so they won't be slaughtered by them. So they come up with a plan.

Their plan is this: Let's all get our oldest, nastiest shoes and put them on our feet. And let's find some old, moldy bread and put that in our bags. And then let's jog up to the Israelites and say, "We just got here. We live, like, really far away. So far away, you wouldn't even possibly be concerned about us. We're very far away. We're so far away. Look, these shoes were brand new when we left, and this bread was fresh out of the oven when we left, but the shoes were worn out and the bread's turned moldy. And anyway, we just wanted to drop by and say hi and say, 'Hey, since we live so far away from each other and we couldn't possibly ever be a harm to one another, let's enter into a treaty such that you can't hurt us.'"

And the Hebrews say, "I mean, alright, since you're not from around here, what do we care? No problem."

And it works. So they enter into this covenant with the Gibeonites—sometimes known as the Gibeonite deception—and then they realize, "Wait a minute. You live right here. You liars. You tricked us."

But here's where it gets weird. This doesn't invalidate the contract. It doesn't invalidate the covenant. There are other instances of this in the Bible. Can you think of another place where people enter into an agreement and it's knowingly fraudulent and then the covenant stands?

There's at least one other major instance where this happens. Jacob and Leah—the whole marriage thing. It's like, "What are you doing?" And then it's like, "Hey, the marriage counts. You're stuck."

Where else? Jacob's blessings. This one is the strangest one to me. You know what I'm talking about?

So Esau is hairy and Jacob is smooth skinned, and Jacob glues some hair on his arms and puts on his brother's clothes so he smells like his brother and goes in and his dad blesses him. Then when Esau shows up to get his blessing, like, Dude, sorry, it's already spent. It's gone. I gave it to Jacob. I would think that you'd be able to be like, Jacob, you scoundrel. Get back here. And then just revoke it. But his dad acts like, sorry, man. It's gone. It's gone.

It's that same kind of vibe here with the Gibeonites. As soon as they realize very quickly that they've been duped, they were lied to—those are old shoes, you liar. But they're like, well, we have an eternal covenant with you, and we can't go to war against you. So they lock it in. And that's just what happens. That's all Joshua chapter nine.

So you gotta know Joshua nine in the background. When was this happening? When would Joshua have been? About three hundred years ago. Yes, that's about right. So generally speaking, if you had to mark the conquest of the land, we'd say it's about December. So it's been two fifty, three hundred years, and David is now coming into his kingship. Think about that. This is like we made the colonies and made some covenant with, I don't know, Mexico or Canada or something because we thought that they were really much further away. And now, like two fifty years later, we're dealing with them.

The Two Illusions

So that's number one. There's a double illusion you need to know about. First of all is that whole thing that happened back in Joshua chapter nine. And then the second thing is that apparently Saul broke that covenant. The Israelites have a lasting covenant with the Gibeonites where they can't mess with them. But Saul does mess with them, and Saul goes to war and kills some of the Gibeonites because he's zealous for the people of God.

Now, what's strange about that is there's no record of it anywhere in the Scriptures. So what we're gonna pick it up here in two Samuel 21 is an allusion to the Gibeonites from Joshua nine and Saul fighting with the Gibeonites that we have no record of happening. And now, with those two things behind us, we can see what's actually going on in David's era. Joshua nine in twelve fifty—Gibeonites enter into this contract. Saul does something, I don't know, twenty or so ago, and now David's got to clean up the mess.

The Text

So with all that in the back of your brain, we can take a look at the text. I really do wish I could clean this thing up and domesticate it for you, but I can't. So here it is. Ready?

During the reign of David, there was a famine for three successive years. So David sought the face of the Lord. And the Lord said, "It is on account of Saul and his blood stained house. It is because he put the Gibeonites to death." — 2 Samuel 21:1

That's everything I was just explaining to you. Saul did something to put the Gibeonites to death that he wasn't allowed to do, and God is unhappy about it. God is unhappy that Saul has done this thing, and so therefore he's gonna starve the land of rain. But why now? Why, after everything we've gone through with David's reign, is the Lord now gonna do something else?

I have no idea. Everything about this story is so bizarre. I don't know why God is particularly mad. I don't know why he's particularly mad now. I don't know why his expression of that madness is a lack of rain for three years, and I really don't know why he's going to be appeased by what he's going to be appeased by. This is a whole thing.

So like I said, there's no record in Scripture at all of Saul doing this, but he did do it because it says he did it. And the Lord—it's the Lord who says, "It is on account of Saul and his blood stained house. It's because he put the Gibeonites to death."

Now, I should tell you this. The reason that I'm making a big deal about that there's no record of it but that it's nevertheless what happened is because some commentaries want to jump into this and try to help us off the hook a little bit by saying that David is going after the Gibeonites for a different reason, and this whole thing is kind of a pretense, and there's just more going on here that makes the whole thing more palatable. I don't think that's open to us.

Because Scripture relates that the Lord explains that this is why this is happening. So we have to take this at face value. And some of the more appealing exit ramps from all of the strangeness of this, I just think they're close to us.

So let's keep going. The king, that's David, verse two, summoned the Gibeonites, and he spoke to them. Now we're gonna get a little bit of background of what I just explained to you. The Gibeonites were Israel, but they were survivors of the Amorites. The Israelites had sworn to spare them. That's back in Joshua nine. But Saul, in his zeal for Israel and Judah, tried to annihilate them. So David asked the Gibeonites:

What shall I do for you? How shall I make amends so that you will bless the Lord's inheritance? — 2 Samuel 21:3

Let's pause there and come up with some suggestions. If you're a Gibeonite and there'd been this unlawful war against you, and someone says, "Can we make amends?" What would you suggest?

Money. Okay, yeah, we like money. Money is great. Give us some of this land. That's great. It's a good plan. Protection? Yeah, protection is great. Hey, so nobody's allowed to do this to us. I put a fence around us, send an armed guard. I like all of these ideas. Laborers or woodcutters? Oh, yeah. See, this is why Bob should have led this. Once they figured out that they had deceived them, they honored the terms of the covenant, but they kind of made them like servants. They were woodcutters and water carriers. And so maybe they would say, "Hey, lighten up on the wood load or something." Do something to give me some kind of compensation. None of those things come back.

It says David says, verse three:

What shall I do? How can I make amends so that you will bless the Lord's inheritance? — 2 Samuel 21:3

The idea is that they have such a legitimate grievance against Israel that God is holding up rain for the people of God. Nobody gets any rain until we deal with this Gibeonite thing.

So that's all pretty weird. Verse four, the Gibeonites answered him:

We have no right to demand silver or gold from Saul or his family, nor do we have the right to put anyone in Israel to death. — 2 Samuel 21:4

At which point you might think, uh-oh. So David says, what do you want me to do for you? And they answered the king:

As for the man who destroyed us and plotted against us so that we have been decimated and have no place anywhere in Israel—as for the man who destroyed us, let seven of his male descendants be given to us to be killed and exposed before the Lord at Gibeah of Saul, the Lord's chosen one. — 2 Samuel 21:5-6

And so the king says, I will give them to you.

What do you do with that? Can anybody help? I'm really not playing with you. I really don't know. Find seven of Saul's descendants, line them up, and let us kill them. What?

So we're just throwing things out. There's something in the wording. When David says, "What can I do so that you may bless the heritage of the Lord?"—like he's saying it's something in the hearts of the Gibeonites that's causing the lack of rain. It's their bitterness. And if we think of the timing of it, it makes me think maybe that bitterness has just grown and grown to the point that the Lord is now punishing Israel because it built over time. And so the only way they're gonna be appeased is through blood. I mean, that's just the way it is. Their bitterness is gonna be appeased through blood, which then causes—I don't know how the Lord does this—but the lessening of their bitterness lessens his punishment on Israel.

There's something here. I don't think this is a bad answer, at least not a bad start to try to get our heads around this. There's some sense in which there really is woven into the very nature of the world that sin equals death, sin equals death, sin equals death. And this is a lesson that God pounds into the people of Israel, chiefly through the sacrificial system: sin equals death, sin equals death. But it doesn't need to be your death. A substitute can die in your place. It doesn't trouble us so much when it's a sheep, but these human beings who are presumably not seemingly complicit in this thing are about to die, and it will appease them. I think the challenge is why does God honor their determination for appeasement?

I would not expect that he would do that for me. There's plenty of people that I'd probably like to kill for being honest about it. Right? But like, we don't generally tend to get honored.

So Faith, can you help? Yes. Yes. And I think the story that Faith is describing in the book of Judges, the guy makes this pledge. He's like, hey, get out, God. You've done so much good for me that I'm gonna kill the first thing that walks out my door. And his daughter walks out, and then he's like, oh, man, I wish it wasn't you. I'm like, what'd you think was gonna walk out? A cow? Like, this is so weird, right? And then he does. And I think what helps us in the book of Judges is that God doesn't—he's not behind this. Judges is a train wreck. Everybody's making terrible decisions. But this seems to be under the blessing of God, which is just so super weird.

Okay, there's another hand. Was it rocks? Yeah. Not to be intellectual laziness on my part, but what if part of this is not necessarily figuring out the nuances of the story, looking at intergenerational sin. The fact that there will be consequences to our actions in general. Right? And we know those consequences in terms of generational sin. And that we would trust that through God's relationship with David that David knew what needed to be done to appease these other individuals. And right, wrong, or otherwise, that was a sacrifice that had to be made to come to the end result.

Yeah. So first of all, wasn't that loud and clear and lovely? That was just great. So well done. Okay? And yes, I think there's something there too, that there really is that we make decisions. You guys, you know this, you make decisions all the time that impact your children. Right? And your parents made decisions that impact you. And you may or may not like it, but it is just the way the universe works. So there's some aspect of that, and maybe we can say that it is better that seven die than that everybody dies because there's gonna be this famine and it's all being held up. Still feels kinda yucky, but yes, there's something in there, perhaps.

Zach? I need some help resolving this. Okay. Seems like verse four and five is one of the largest hypocritical things I've ever seen so far, where they're giving answers saying we have no right to put anyone in Israel to death, and then five, well actually we do, and I want seven people to put them to death.

Well, I think all that they're saying there is we don't have that right unless you give us that right. And then David's like, alright, deal. And you kind of feel like, David, did you hear their first option? Like, just give him some money, you know? But he doesn't. I don't know.

Now, here's the thing. I'll give you one maybe weasley answer, but I don't know. But when they say they present these two parallel options—well, we don't have the right to ask for money, and we don't have the right to put anybody to death. And he's like, okay, well, what are you asking for? And they're like, the death option. And then David says, sure. And I wonder if David and the Gibeonites are both presented with these two options legitimately before David, and David is the king, and David gets to choose. And if David had said, yeah, no deal on the death, but we'll give you a bag of gold, would the Lord have blessed that as well? And I don't know if this is true, but could David have simply said, okay, yeah, that's a bit much. No. We'll pay reparations, right, and we'll make these other changes. And God is allowing David to make his decisions. There must be an appeasement, and God is allowing this rather than that. Maybe that's true. Maybe that's not true. It's hard for me to make this solid. But it seemed like they presented two options. David could have gone with that, but he doesn't.

And if not, it might be because of who is gonna die now? What family is going to die? And this is where you put the whole thing. By rights, when David became king, he could have wiped out the entire family of Saul. But he didn't. So these are not just the people that tried to attack the Gibeonites. This is the family that was trying to kill Saul for all these generations. And when David becomes king, he's remarkably gracious to Saul's family, doesn't kill them, and in particular, for the sake of what one individual does he not go after Saul's family? The whole Mephibosheth thing. So Mephibosheth is gonna show up here again. So I wonder if that has something to do with it.

David sees this as an opportunity to clear out the oppositional family and to really secure his kingdom, and he's using this legitimate grievance as somewhat of a pretense to do what he had wanted to do. Might be true. I don't know, but that's possible.

Kelly Sue, I just have a question. He wants them gone from the Promised Land. Doesn't just want them relocated, he wants them killed.

That's true, but Saul's not a Canaanite, he's a Benjamite. Is there any parallel? That's a great question, and I would say David didn't, and now he's doing it.

It's possible that David was under orders to wipe out Saul's line in any case, and this is just an opportunity to do that? It could be. I don't remember ever seeing that. Bob, do you got anything about that?

Well, it's almost contrary. I'm thinking back in '24 or '26 that Saul actually says to him, "Make a covenant with me not to kill my heirs." And David basically acquiesces. Yeah. And he keeps that commitment through Mephibosheth.

What if God was actually the one orchestrating this? I mean, he is orchestrating the famine. So what if he's actually allowing this to all take place for the very purpose of taking care of this?

What Bob is saying is at the end of the day, it's not God orchestrating this directly. God's behind the famine. Whatever power the Gibeonites have, they have no power over the rain. The Lord is behind this. And so God may have, for his own reasons that are not described here, and I think that's where I'm gonna have to land: God has his purposes and he's gonna accomplish those purposes through human agency. People die all the time. God can justly take life, and he does every single day.

Does the manner of death trouble you? They got hanged. They were cursed because they were hung on a tree.

Mine says hanged, but I had a note that said we don't know exactly what that means. What verse is that?

Killed and exposed in verse six, and then in verse nine it says, "He handed them over to the Gibeonites who killed and exposed them on a hill."

Mine says killed and exposed on a hill. Read me your verse nine.

"And he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them."

So the foot was impaled? Yeah. Nobody knows how they were hanged or by what method. You assume hanged means by a rope, but I don't know that that method of death even exists. I don't think a gallows like that necessarily even existed. Maybe it did. Don't know.

The Christocentric View

Becky, I think the comments everyone's making just keep pointing to the sacrifice that Christ made. Wealth wasn't enough. It had to be life. If they were hung on a tree, that points to Christ. If given the choice of how to redeem something, he chose life instead. They could have given him wealth to appease them.

I love Christocentric takes on the scripture. Let's read how it points to Christ. There's something about sin equals death, and the penalty must be paid. A thousand times yes. But it gets a little bit weird when it's not voluntary. Jesus voluntarily dies. So we'll do a couple more.

John, take a stab at this. Lily and Tommy, you guys can debate which of you gets to go.

It might be impaled. It might be hung. It might be crucified for all I know. It's something in this space. It's rough. They die, and it's bad.

The Land and Atonement

It makes me think back to the Mosaic Law where it talks about the polluting of the land. When the people sin, they pollute the land. So I think that kind of points to why is this going up now with the land if that's where you grow things from. You leave sin unaddressed, it festers and produces weeds and thorns that choke and all manner of brokenness in the earth. But also, it makes me think about the concept of polluting the land and the whole thing with the priest, atonement for sin is blood. So what else is going to turn the wrath of God ultimately? It is ultimately sin must be atoned. Right?

So there it is. And so it may also be that we have a biblical principle that the one who sins will die. We do not hold children accountable for the sins of their fathers.

So this feels at odds with that, and yet there is nevertheless some sense in which we live under federal headship, that you've accepted because you had no choice the consequences of what your parents have done plenty of times. And so it is with your children. So it's all super weird, but let's keep it going because there's more to come.

Alright? So do you think God's gonna bless this? Is he gonna on the basis of the death of these seven, is he gonna bring the rain? He does. So here's what happens. Verse seven, go back. The king spared Mephibosheth son of Jonathan remember this? He's like, alright, can have seven, but you can't have this kid because of an oath before the Lord between David and Jonathan son of Saul.

But the king took Armoni and some other dude named Mephibosheth, two sons of Ai's daughter Rizpah, whom she had borne to Saul, together with the five sons of Saul's daughter, Merab, whom she had borne to Adriel, a bunch of people's names. He handed them over to the Gibeonites who killed and exposed them on a hill before the Lord, and all seven of them fell together. They were put to death during the first days of the harvest, just as the barley harvest was beginning.

Now, this gets more complex. This is also everything about this story is strange. Watch Rizpah. Rizpah is the mother of two of the seven dead Gibeonites. And she's gonna be kind of the hero of this passage, this part of the story.

Rizpah, the daughter of Ai Aiah, took a sackcloth and spread it out for herself on a rock from the beginning of the harvest until the rain poured down from the heavens. — verse 10

Remember, it hasn't rained for three years. So she goes out and she camps by the dead bodies of her two sons, and she did not let the birds of the air touch them by day or the wild animals by night. What is she doing? Mourning. She is mourning. This is true. But why does she mourn in this way? Why does she set up a tent and hang out with these dead bodies of her kids?

You will not see your holy one will not see corruption. — [referenced passage]

Okay. So hang on. But why is she doing it? What's her purpose? What's her motive? She's honoring their bodies. Right? She doesn't want otherwise some wolf's gonna come in and tear off the femur, and somebody's gonna come and do all these horrible things to the bodies. And so she's there. We honor the bodies of the dead and Christ's bodies. It's all true. But right now, she's just going to honor their bodies. And I think, well, maybe you could bury them in a hole and go back to bed. But she stays there with them, and when David hears it, he's super impressed that he honors, to an extreme degree, the bodies of these that he just ordered to be killed.

When David was told what Rizpah, Saul's concubine, had done, he went and took the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan from the citizens of Jabesh Gilead. They had taken them secretly in public square. — verse 11

He brought the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan from there, and the bones of those who had been killed and exposed were gathered up. And they buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the tomb of Saul's father, Kish, Azalea, and Benjamin. He did everything the king commanded. — verses 13-14a

I think the clear implication is that he combines their bones. He honors Saul, which is always a strange thing. He honors Saul by burying his body. Believers in God, we've always honored our bodies because we believe in a resurrection. They believe in a resurrection. They honor their bones. He buries their bones, and he collects the bones of those that he had allowed to be killed as a compensation for the Gibeonites having been wronged and buries them with Saul, which is so countercultural again to us. We would think, well, I don't really care so much what you do about my body, I'd rather you about my son's bodies. I would just rather you didn't kill them in the first place.

And then the weirdest thing of all is at the end of verse 14:

And after that, God answered prayer on behalf of the land.

And everything's all better now, except it's so weird, and I don't get it at all.

Understanding the Situation

So we've come up with a handful of theories, a few things that might explain what's going on here. They suffered a real injustice, and you have to keep your word. Even though they entered the Gibeon this whole thing started with the Gibeonites lying and deceiving. That covenant that was made was locked and secure, and there's no way out of it. That's weird.

When Saul, who is not generally all that zealous for Israel, like, he's the one who didn't go to war. He was supposed to go to war, and he refused to go to war. When he corrects it, he overcorrects it, and he starts killing people he has no obligation or authority to kill. And that injury is so great that God withholds rain from the land for three years. Do you know how devastating that is?

Can you imagine if in our world, like right here, if we didn't get rain for three years? It would be absolute devastation. Three years is devastating. And it is devastating. But they've got systems and irrigation. We can just steal all the water out of Colorado and pop it into them. Right? So it's a big deal. Three years of this.

And then God is appeased because these old obligations are real obligations. Sin has to be paid for. Commitments must be honored. And then the story ends. And the author doesn't do anything to help you out of your discomfort. He doesn't even indicate that we would find it uncomfortable.

Right? Terry? Does this—is this something here that they were put to death in the first days of harvest at the beginning of the barley harvest. Is there some meaning to that, or is that only telling time?

I think that's only telling time. And of course, it doesn't tell me anything because I don't know when the barley harvest is. But I think it's just an indicator of the time.

John, do you have an insight into that?

So Jesus would have been crucified just before the Law. You're saying this would have been March, April?

And perhaps so we have this want. It keeps bubbling up, like, Is this something about Jesus? God bless you, right? Because that's what we're trying to do. How do we learn to read the scriptures Christocentrically? That is the whole purpose of this conversation. And I wish that I could be like, "Yeah, obvious and everything feels better." And it might be the right answer that their death is in some way typological. That is, the death of—and here's where it does work, perhaps—if an innocent person dies to atone the sin that blesses the entire people, then we can see that. Right? And we can squint at that at least and be like, okay. So an innocent person dies and the people are saved. I think we can get behind that.

But the discomfort, of course, is that Jesus was voluntary. He wasn't—we didn't drag him out of the crowd and then throw him into it. And so I don't know, you can take it that way you wanna go. But that's the story. That's what happens.

And my best job, my best attempt to faithfully prove before you accurately without playing games with you and then offer some suggestions. But I can't do any better than that.

So Zach? Do you think there might be something to that the beginning part of the story of the Gibeonites had its own merit and something that God wanted resolved, but also it could be so that it could set up an opportunity for David to have full closure with Saul's family and honoring those who came before him?

I do think that's true. And I'll take it. My evidence, I guess, is again maybe it's nothing, but take a stab by all means. At the very end of 14 it says after it was basically after that when David took Saul's and Jonathan's bones and brought them all together in an honorable way, did God answer the prayer?

Yes.

Okay. So good. So you're saying perhaps God's blessing that flows isn't merely out of the death of the Gibeonites, but is after the honoring of Saul's family and then bringing that to closure.

Yeah. I like that. That's actually a good observation that the blessing doesn't—it's not as soon as the Gibeonites are dead, but as soon as the bones are buried and everything is done and Saul is honored and they are honored, then he brings it to closure.

Yeah. I think that's a really important observation. You continue to impress me with your ability to read the text. So yes, maybe. That's all I got. Except a few more completely weird things that need to happen unrelated to.

Carlton? Did you say earlier that you weren't sure that David's killing of Saul's progeny was against the promise he had made earlier? Wasn't Saul asking that he did not completely wipe his name out of his father's house? It wasn't that he would not kill any of them.

That's true. Not erase his name, his lineage, in totality.

Yes. That's accurate. And certainly Mephibosheth, and my guess would be more than just these seven. Because they said choose seven descendants. The implication is that there are more than seven to choose from. So yeah, he doesn't wipe out Saul's family, but this maybe kind of puts a bow on that whole story.

Okay. So that's all weird, and that's the end of this movement, and now we have a little bit more weird stuff that's unrelated. You ready?

Giant Battles

The chapter ends like this. There's four little vignettes about great people that kill a bunch of really bad people. And now we feel better about these people dying than we do about the first half.

So here's what happens. Once again there was a battle between the Philistines and Israel. David went down with his men to fight against the Philistines. He became exhausted. Then some dude and one of the descendants of Rapha—note that, R-A-P-H-A, Rapha—whose bronze spearhead weighed 300 and who was armed with a new sword, said he would kill David.

But this other guy shows up and kills the Philistine. David's men swore to him, saying, "Never again will you go with us to battle, so the lamp of Israel will not be extinguished." And there's some great military victory.

Then, in the course of time, there was another battle with the Philistines at Gab. At that time, this other dude killed this other guy who was a descendant of Rapha. And then in another battle with the Philistines at Gab, some other guy killed Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver's rod. It doesn't say that he's from Rapha, but it will at the postscript.

And then in verse 20, still another battle which took place at Gath. There was a huge man with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, 24 in all. What movie are you thinking of? Princess Bride. He also was descended from Rapha, and when he taunted Israel, Jonathan the son of Shemeah, David's brother, killed him.

These four, including the one we didn't mention it about, were descendants of Rapha and Gath, and they fell at the hands of David and his men. What's the impression you get from that? What's the impression you get from those rapid fire stories?

So you see kind of this book ending with this Goliath thing, this huge dude. David's story begins with killing this massive, huge guy, and as we're winding down the story, you've got like four different stories of huge, big, massive dudes getting killed by David's people, basically. That's the storyline.

There is some suggestion that this Goliath story is the true story of Goliath and that the David and Goliath story is a lie. I just think there's two guys named Goliath. I don't think it's that complicated. There's two dudes named Goliath. There's two people named everything. It's not a big deal.

But at the end of the story, we've got all these huge guys, and they're all getting killed. What I want you to see is that the huge guy theme is a massive storyline in the Scriptures, and we tend to not know what to do with it, but they're all related.

The Nephilim Throughout Scripture

I'm going to give you a real quick primer on the huge guy syndrome. Go to Genesis six.

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward, when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were hearers of old, men of renown. — Genesis 6:4

The Nephilim were these huge, huge guys. In some way, there's a story that seems like their origin story literally involves being the offspring of demonic men and human women that have these cross breed children. I know that's really weird, but I think it's actually true. We could unpack that some other time, and I could make a very strong biblical case for that for you. But we won't.

When we saw the Nephilim there, the descendants of Anak, we seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we look the same to them. — Numbers 13:33

The Anakites show up over and over again.

Where can we go? Our brothers made us lose heart. They say that people are taller and stronger than we are. The cities are large with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there. — Deuteronomy 1:28

They were a people strong and numerous and as tall as the Anakites. The Lord destroyed them before the Ammonites who drove them out and settled in their place. — Deuteronomy 2:21

All over the place, what you find is that the Nephilim are the offspring of demons or if that's too far of a bridge for you, I sympathize. Whatever they are, there are these huge dudes. Massive, terrifying. Goliath is like nine feet tall. These are gigantic men. And then God says, kill them all. Wipe them out. Every time you see God saying wipe everybody out, they are from the Nephilim or of the Anakites or this other term you're going to get to.

The Emmites used to live there, a people strong and numerous and as tall as Anakites. — Deuteronomy 2:10

Like the Anakites, they too were considered—note this word—Rephaites, but the Moabites called them Amites. Okay, there's a million names there. What were the four people killed back in chapter 21? R-a-p-h-a. You see this one? R-e-p-h-a-i-t-e-s. Most people believe that the Rapha and the Rephites are the same thing. It's just like a linguistic slide. What we see is that there appears to have been a group of people. Their DNA is big. They are huge. And we see them called the Nephilim. Their descendants are called the Anakites. Their descendants are called the Rephites. My guess would be that they just keep interbreeding—like Tallgemere is a short girl and they have a medium kid, right? This is happening. There's something going on.

But what you find throughout all of these stories: when God is in a posture to say kill everybody, it's almost always related to these super, super tall giant beings that are—whether you accept that they're literally demonic or not—they're evil. And the wiping out is always a clearing the land of this wretchedness. Not that it's bad to be tall. I'm not saying some of you are very tall—we don't think that you're very evil, although some of you are kind of evil. But that's what's going on here.

So this seems to be that when we see the Rafa, we think of Rephites, we think of Anakites, we think Nephilim—it's all related people. If you read the Bible like I do, if you read everything like He told you, I skip all the nouns. I skip all the proper nouns. Names are nothing to me. And that causes me to miss things. I've only recently slowed down enough to be like, "What is this word? Who is this? Who is this?" And I think they're all related. And that's also super strange.

But what David is saying, or what the story is saying, is that as David's kingship is completely kind of captured up, they really go the distance to finally, finally wipe out all these wretched, evil giants. And that does bring the closing of the curtain, the book ending that Lily was suggesting. He begins by killing this giant who's probably part of his family, and then the story ends with his men cleaning up the last of them, and we close the curtain. That's basically what we're seeing here.

Kelly: I just want to say that verse 19 about Goliath—okay, which chapter? Back in Samuel?

Speaker: Yeah, Second Samuel 21. Yep.

Kelly: About citing Goliath again. You said it was a tombstone that you thought. My appendix says in First Chronicles 20, that that's probably Goliath's brother.

In another battle of the Philistines, Elpana, son of Jair killed Lommy, the brother of Goliath, the head tied him by a spear with a shaphank. — First Chronicles 20:5

Oh, that's interesting. So it may have just been that they just didn't distinguish between Goliath and Goliath's brother.

Speaker: Yes. And I wonder if it's brother or if it's even sometimes brother is a stretchy term—family member. But that would be confirming that there's just multiple. They call them gigantic because they're giants. They're huge, huge evil people. So, okay, Dan?

Dan: I'm struck that when David was facing the original Goliath, all of Israel was in fear of this one guy. Here at the end, we have four different guys rising up to kill giants.

Speaker: Yeah. You know, the call it growth in the people of Israel.

Dan: Trusting God, greater obedience to God, whatever.

Speaker: That's a good observation. I think the writer is attempting here to kind of lay at David's feet—this is one of the things David has accomplished for the people of Israel.

Dan: If you see not just symmetry from the beginning and the end, but the asymmetry: David was the only guy willing to go toe to toe, now there's a whole bunch of guys that are willing to get the job done. The people of God are following their leader and becoming like him.

Speaker: I like that. That's beautiful. I think that's right on. You guys need anything else weird before we go to church, or is that enough for one day? Okay.