Plans, promises, conflicts, and injured pride which wrought revenge, all these tangled into royal intrigue for ultimate power— the early days of Israel’s newfound kingdom begins in such strife and horrid inhumanity we may find reading the books of Samual/Kings/Chronicles very difficult from a Christian perspective.  Yet scripture lays out for the generations to thoughtfully examine the bare ugliness of Israel’s ubiquitous sin.

And yet, I wonder if we could go back in time and ask any of these actors of Israel’s move into monarchy how they viewed themselves, we’d find they saw themselves very much as we see ourselves today, products of the evil environment around us, forcing our hand to act equally to what evil we constantly confront. To do otherwise is unseeable. It is viewed as what we must do to survive. In that argument there is some truth— but not all the truth. 

David’s reign began so promising, so clear, so attentive to what God sought in his life and yet here at the end, we read how David has so lost his vision of God’s providential hand he is now blind even to his own family and their wicked ways. In this story readers of the generations are given insight to the whole truth, that seeking vision of God and his will in our whole life is linked directly to our ability to see what is true right now before us. To be blind to God, is to become blind in all.