The narrative books are on the whole easy targets for finding humour, so again I’ll recycle an old podcast This time in 2 Samuel 7 where God plays with words and puns away while explaining what he meant…

So, here’s the link to the audio: God the Exegete

Bathsheba goes to David by Francesco Salviati (1510–1563)

These two chapters mark the turning point in David’s story.

They offer vital clues also to how we “read” biblical narratives.

• Nathan’s story within a story provides hints, abouit the nature of narrative meaning
• David’s strange behaviour  during his child’s illness and on his death provides both a clue to an interpretative rule, and some good practice

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“The fall of Israel” is a theological (not historical) title. This five covers almost the whole history of the Israelite kingdoms from David to the destruction of Jerusalem. The Deuteronomistic History (Joshua-Kings) from which they all come (cf. remarks on Judges) tell the story with the end in view, one important goal of these books is to explain the fall of Jerusalem and the exile.

So this is a good selection to understand what is going on:

1. Even the great king David is human and fails (spectacularly)
2. Solomon is seen at his best – asking for and displaying wisdom not wealth or power;
3. building the temple and expressing fine theology
   not as the king who began to lose an empire, and introduced idols to the temple
4. Elijah and the fight on Mt Carmel is an archetypical story of the conflict between belief in gods and in God
5. Then the final reading tells the ghastly and traumatic story of the fall of Jerusalem and the end of Israel as a political entity – but worse of the temple and crown promised by God!

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by didbygraham

Bible stories, with a few exceptions (maybe some parables for example) do NOT have nice neat “morals”. If you want to say “and the moral of the story is…” don’t read the Bible. But by contrast if you want people with real depth, who make it difficult for us to work out what their motives are, and therefore hard to simply place them in appropriate “boxes”, the Bible is the book for you

In this reading we’ll notice depth and complexity in two of the less central characters, Michal and Nathan. In that complexity we may find clues to living our own, often also complex, lives…

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This is the first part of a short series (it might only be two parts, who knows on passages where God exegetes his own words.

In this part we’ll look at 2 Samuel 7, where David wants to build a ‘house’ = temple for God, since he already has a nice ‘house’ = palace for himself (‘house of cedar’ means a palace with expensive wood panelling). I’ll look at how God gives a four word speech and then explains in detail what it means. And in the process starts the punning and wordplay that lead to the superb promise to David, later in the chapter.

Here’s the audio of : God the exegete: 2 Sam 7: Part One

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