Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Using the Great Adventure Bible Timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story. Today it is day 137. Gosh, think about that, day 137.
You have been so faithful. Oh my gosh. Even if you haven't gotten every day perfect, maybe you have. Um, but here you are nevertheless, you have made it all the way to day 137. We are reading 2 Samuel chapter 19, 1 Chronicles 24, and we are praying Psalm 38.
As always, the translation of the Bible that I'm reading from is the Revised Standard Version, the Second Catholic Edition. I'm using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. I know some of you have been able to follow along and you know, you might listen as you're driving in your car, you might listen as you're out for a walk. Uh, but some people just really love to sit down and have the words in front of them as well as the words in their ears. And so that's it.
What an incredible opportunity and gift to be able to do that. Uh, if you want to download your own Bible in a Year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinyear. And if you have not yet subscribed to this podcast, you can by simply clicking subscribe, and you'll be subscribed, and we'll move on. Anyways, speaking of moving on, as I said, we are reading from 2 Samuel chapter 19, 1 Chronicles 24, and we are praying Psalm 38.
2 Samuel 19:1. David mourns for Absalom. It was told Joab, "Behold, the king is weeping and mourning for Absalom." So the victory that day was turned into mourning for all the people, for the people heard that day, "The king is grieving for his son." And the people stole into the city that day, as people steal in who are ashamed when they flee in battle. The king covered his face, and the king cried with a loud voice, "O my son Absalom!" "Oh, Absalom, my son, my son!" Then Joab came into the house of the king and said, "You have today covered with shame the faces of all your servants who have this day saved your life and the lives of your sons and your daughters and the lives of your wives and your concubines, because you love those who hate you and hate those who love you. For you have made it clear today that commanders and servants are nothing to you.
For today I perceive that if Absalom were alive and all of us were dead today, then you would be pleased. Now therefore arise, go out, and speak kindly to your servants. For I swear by the LORD, if you do not go, not a man will stay with you this night, and this will be worse for you than all the evil that has come upon you from your youth until now.' Then the king arose and took his seat in the gate. And the people were all told, 'Behold, the king is sitting in the gate.' And all the people came before the king. Now Israel had fled every man to his own home, and all the people were at strife throughout all the tribes of Israel, saying, The king delivered us from the hand of our enemies and saved us from the hand of the Philistines, and now he has fled out of the land from Absalom.
But Absalom, whom we anointed over us, is dead in battle. Now therefore, why do you say nothing about bringing the king back? David is recalled. And King David sent this message to Zadok and Abiathar the priests: Say to the elders of Judah, Why should you be the last to bring the king back to his house, when the word of all Israel has come to the king? You are my kinsmen, you are my bone and my flesh.
Why then should you be the last to bring back the king? And say to Amasa, 'Are you not my bone and my flesh?' God do so to me and more also if you are not commander of my army henceforth in the place of Joab. And he swayed the heart of all the men of Judah as one man, so that they sent word to the king, 'Return, both you and all your servants.' So the king came back to the Jordan, and Judah came to Gilgal to meet the king. And to bring the king over the Jordan. Shimei Meets David and Is Forgiven.
And Shimei the son of Gera the Benjamite, from Bahurim, made haste to come down with the men of Judah to meet King David; and with him were a thousand men from Benjamin. And Ziba the servant of the house of Saul, with his 15 sons and his 20 servants, rushed down to the Jordan before the king; and they crossed the ford to bring over the king's household, and to do his pleasure. And Shimei the son of Gera fell down before the king as he was about to cross the Jordan, and said to the king, Let not my lord hold me guilty, or remember how your servant did wrong on the day my lord the king left Jerusalem: let not the king bear it in mind; for your servant knows that I have sinned. Therefore, behold, I have come this day the first of all the house of Joseph to come down to meet my lord the king. Abishai the son of Zeruiah answered, Shall not Shimei be put to death for this, because he cursed the LORD's anointed?
But David said, What have I to do with you, you sons of Zerah, that you should this day be as an adversary to me? Shall anyone be put to death in Israel this day? For do I not know that I am this day king over Israel? And the king said to Shimei, You shall not die. And the king gave him his oath.
David and Mephibosheth Meet. And Mephibosheth the son of Saul came down to meet the king. He had neither dressed his feet, nor trimmed his beard, nor washed his clothes, from the day the king departed until the day he came back in safety. And when he came from Jerusalem to meet the king, the king said to him, Why did you not go with me, Mephibosheth? He answered, My lord, O king, my servant deceived me; for your servant said to him, Saddle a donkey for me, that I may ride upon it, and go with the king; for your servant is lame.
He has slandered your servant to my lord the king. But my lord the king is like the angel of God; do therefore what seems good to you. For all my father's house were but men doomed to death before my lord the king, but you set your servant among those who eat at your table. What further right have I, then, to cry to the king?" And the king said to him, "Why speak any more of your affairs? I have decided: you and Ziba shall divide the land." And Mephibosheth said to the king, "Oh, let him take it all, since my lord the king has come safely home." David Blesses Barzillai.
Now Barzillai the Gileadite had come down from Mogalim, and he went on with the king to the Jordan, to escort him over the Jordan. Barzillai was a very aged man, 80 years old, and he had provided the king with food while he stayed at Mahanaim, for he was a very wealthy man. And the king said to Barzillai, "Come over with me, and I will provide for you with me in Jerusalem." But Barzillai said to the king, "How many years have I still to live, that I should go up with the king to Jerusalem? I am this day 80 years old. Can I discern what is pleasant and what is not?
Can your servant taste what he eats or what he drinks? Can I still listen to the voice of singing men and singing women? Why then should your servant be an added burden to my lord the king? Your servant will go a little way over the Jordan with the king." Why should the king recompense me with such a reward? Please let your servant return, that I may die in my own city, near the grave of my father and my mother.
But here is your servant Chimham; let him go over with my lord the king and do for him whatever seems good to you.' And the king answered, 'Chimham shall go over with me, and I will do for him whatever seems good to you; and all that you desire of me I will do for you.' Then all the people went over the Jordan, and the king went over; and the king kissed Barzillai and blessed him, and he returned to his own home. The king went on to Gilgal, and Shimham went on with him. All the people of Judah, and also half the sons of Israel, brought the king on his way. Dissension Between Israel and Judah. Then all the men of Israel came to the king and said to the king, Why have our brethren the men of Judah stolen you away, and brought the king and his household over the Jordan, and all David's men with him?
All the men of Judah answered the men of Israel, "Because the king is near of kin to us. Why then are you angry over this matter? Have we eaten at all at the king's expense, or has he given us any gift?" And the men of Israel answered the men of Judah, "We have 10 shares in the king, and in David also we have more than you. Why then did you despise us? Were we not the first to speak of bringing back our king?" But the words of the men of Judah were fiercer than the words of the men of Israel.
The First Book of Chronicles, chapter 24. The Divisions of the Sons of Aaron. The divisions of the sons of Aaron were these: the sons of Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. But Nadab and Abihu died before their father and had no children, so Eleazar and Ithamar became the priests. With the help of Zadok of the sons of Eleazar, and Ahimelech of the sons of Ithamar, David organized them according to the appointed duties in their service.
Since more chief men were found among the sons of Eleazar than among the sons of Ithamar, they organized them under the 16 heads of fathers' houses of the sons of Eleazar and 8 of the sons of Ithamar. They organized them by lot, all alike, for there were officers of the sanctuary and officers of God among both the sons of Eleazar and the sons of Ithamar. And the scribe Shemaiah the son of Nethanel, a Levite, recorded them in the presence of the king and the princes, and Zadok the priest, and Ahimelech the son of Abiathar, and the heads of the fathers' houses of the priests and of the Levites, one fathers' house being chosen for Eleazar, and one chosen for Ithamar. The first lot fell to Jehoiarib, the second to Jedaiah, the third to Harim, the fourth to Seorim, the fifth to Malkijah, The 6th to Mijamin, the 7th to Hakkoz, the 8th to Abijah, the 9th to Jeshua, the 10th to Shechaniah, the 11th to Eliashib, the 12th to Joakim, the 13th to Huppah, the 14th to Jeshebeab, the 15th to Bilga, the 16th to Immer, the 17th to Hezir, the 18th to Hephaezes, the 19th to Pethahiah, the 20th to Jehezkel, 21st to Jachin, 22nd to Gamul, 23rd to Delaiah, 24th to Maaseiah.
These had as their appointed duty in the service to come into the house of the LORD according to the procedure established for them by Aaron their father, as the LORD God of Israel had commanded them.
Other Levites. And of the rest of the sons of Levi, of the sons of Amram, Shuba'el; of the sons of Shuba'el, Jedaiah; of Rehabiah, of the sons of Rehabiah, Ishaiah the chief; of the Izharites, Shelomoth; of the sons of Shelomoth, Jahath; of the sons of Hebron, Jeraiah the chief, Amariah the second, Jehaziel the third, Jachamiam the fourth; the sons of Uzziel, Micah; of the sons of Micah, Shamir; The brother of Micah, Ishaiah. Of the sons of Ishaiah, Zechariah. The sons of Merari, Mali and Mushi. The sons of Jahaziah, Bino.
The sons of Merari, of Jahaziah, Bino, Shoham, Zakur, and Ibri. Of Mali, Eleazar, who had no sons. Of Kish, the sons of Kish, Jerahmeel. The sons of Mushi, Mali, Eder, and Jeremoth. These were the sons of the Levites according to their fathers' houses; these also, the head of each fathers' house and his younger brother alike, cast lots, just as their brethren the sons of Aaron, in the presence of King David, Zadok, Ahimelech, and the heads of the fathers' houses of the priests and of the Levites.
Psalm 38. A Penitent Sufferer's Plea for Healing. A Psalm of David. For the memorial offering. O LORD, rebuke me not in your anger, nor chasten me in your wrath.
For your arrows have sunk into me, and your hand has come down on me. There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities have gone over my head; they weigh like a burden too heavy for me. My wounds grow foul and fester because of my foolishness; I am utterly bowed down and prostrate; all the day I go about mourning. For my loins are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh.
I am utterly spent and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart. Lord, all my longing is known to you; my sighing is not hidden from you. My heart throbs, my strength fails me, and the light of my eyes, it also has gone from me. My friends and companions stand aloof from my plague, and my kinsmen stand afar off. Those who seek my life lay their snares; those who seek my hurt speak of ruin and meditate treachery all the day long.
But I am like a deaf man, I do not hear, like a mute man who does not open his mouth; yes, I am like a man who does not hear, and in whose mouth are no rebukes. But for you, O LORD, do I wait; it is you, O LORD my God, who will answer. For I pray, only let them not rejoice over me who boast against me when my foot slips. For I am ready to fall, and my pain is ever with me. I confess my iniquity; I am sorry for my sin.
Those who are my foes without cause are mighty, and many are those who hate me wrongfully. Those who render me evil for good are my adversaries because I follow after good. Do not forsake me, O LORD! O my God, be not far from me! Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation.
Father in heaven, give you praise today and every day. Your mercies are new every morning, and you speak to us with your fresh voice, your eternal voice, your voice that is the same yesterday, today, and forever, because your word, Lord God, your word, Jesus Christ, is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so we thank you and we give you praise today Thank you for speaking to us words of knowledge, words of wisdom, words that even capture the penitence of our hearts, the sorrow of our hearts when we experience opposition and when we experience even internal failure. You give us in the Psalm, Psalm 38 today, Lord God, you give us words of repentance, words that voice confidence in you when we need you the most and when we deserve you the least. And that's when you give us your love.
That's when you give us your mercy, when we need it the most and deserve it the least. And so we give you praise and thank you in Jesus' name. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Gosh, okay, here we go.
As just two quick things as we kind of wrap up this day, day 137, um, one thing about Chronicles— remember that Chronicles started out with all of those names. We wanted to highlight the genealogy. The chronicler wanted to highlight the genealogy of not only the people of Israel, but specifically the people who are following in the line of David, right, of the tribe of Judah, because that's where the Messiah is going to come from. Now we also are getting a bunch of names connected to the priesthood. So we have the tribe of Levi, because remember, the Chronicler wants to remind the people of Israel, okay, yes, we have fallen on hard times, but God promised that there would be a kingdom that lasts forever, and God promised there'd be worship that would give him glory for all time, right?
So, so he's really following the line of Judah and the line of Levi, and that's going to be a really important thing to keep in mind. Now, one thing yesterday— I think it was yesterday— we read about all of the, the new roles of the families in the tribe of Levi, right? So we have Aaron, who's the, the priest, but they have the other three sons of the tribe of Levi that had duties in the temple that weren't duties of priests. I don't know if you noticed this before, but David is a couple number of times described as having an ephod, that he would put on an ephod and then go pray. He'd put on the ephod and go before the Lord.
And one of the things we can think is, wait, is David a priest? Now we know very, very clearly that David is from the tribe of Judah, and we also know very, very clearly that you can only be a priest if you are from the tribe of Levi and actually of the family of Aaron. And so when David puts on an ephod, he's wearing the clothes of a priest, and he even seems to participate in a certain way in the actions of the priest. But it is important to note that while David participates in worship, David participates by even writing a bunch of songs, aka the Psalms, that are used in worship. While he participates in this, and he is active when it comes to temple worship, even wearing an ephod, David is not a priest.
If he is, he is what I've heard people describe as he is like a priest in the line of Melchizedek, which is a whole nother thing, which is pretty phenomenal. Jesus, according to the letter to the Hebrews, is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek because Jesus also was not of the tribe of Levi. And so there's a, there's a, a way in which David not only foreshadows Jesus's being a king, the royal nature of Christ's role on the earth, but also foreshadows in some ways a priesthood of Melchizedek. And so if you're ever wondering about that, like, wait a second, it seems like David, he's always going before the Lord dressed like a priest. Is he a priest too?
Um, he's not. And we're actually going to see a number of times— we saw Saul who offered a sacrifice, he shouldn't have offered a sacrifice. We're going to see in Kings other kings who offered sacrifices and were killed because of that. So it's, it's, it's not something someone takes upon themselves. It is given to them because they're of the family of Aaron, of the tribe of Levi.
Just FYI, in case you're interested at all in that, it's good to note. Now, going back to 2 Samuel chapter 19, this is a really big moment because there's a couple things that happen that show, again, David's brokenness, David's weakness, and David's goodness. The first is, here is David who is mourning and grieving over his son Absalom. And now he's doing this, and yesterday we noted it and how powerful it was. And in some ways you can even say how tragically beautiful it is, this love of a father for his son.
Would that I had died instead of you. Okay. But what happened was because of this, David brought shame upon all the people who fought for him. Remember, there are 20,000 people had died that day in order to preserve David's kingdom, in order to preserve the fight against the civil war that was happening as everyone was going, as many people were going after Absalom. 20,000 men had died fighting for David's throne.
And now here's David who's saying, would that I had died instead of Absalom. And so what it describes, it says the, the, they heard that the king is grieved for his son. So the people stole back into the city as people who are ashamed, who've ran away from battle, steal back, uh, when they flee in battle. And so what does Joab do? Joab is, man, he has to speak truth to power here, right?
Joab has to come before the king and say, today you've disgraced You're— people who put their lives on the line for you, people who have given up everything, even their very life for you. You've disgraced them by acting like this. He says, we even think that maybe you wish we had all died and Absalom was alive. But you have other sons, you have other daughters. Absalom would have killed them if we had not fought.
And so he kind of knocks some sense into David because this is the thing. So, so often Man, so often we can find ourselves in a position just like this. We can find ourselves in a position where what we've lost, what we've lost overshadows what we have, or the sadness of losing someone in our lives can overshadow the fact that there are still people in our lives who, um, who love us, who need to be loved by us. They're still there and that we have to— we can grieve. Of course we do.
We can mourn, of course we do. But at some point we've got to acknowledge that there are people still here. There's people still among us that need to be loved and, and we're the only ones who can do it. Uh, and so David had to get some sense knocked into him in order to get out of that, that funk. Now, obviously this is a big moment.
One of his sons was killed in battle, but this is the same son who was trying to kill him and trying to kill the rest of his family. And so again, Joab, does a good word, he does a good deed by knocking some sense into David in this. Later on, you have David forgiving Shimei. Remember the man who cursed David and threw rocks at him, um, as David was fleeing Jerusalem? He comes back to David and apologizes.
But there's this really interesting moment where David basically says the people of Judah, right, his tribe— David's from the tribe of Judah— they reestablish him as the king in Israel. And the other tribes in Israel, the other 10 tribes in Israel, they said, why don't we get to be part of this? Well, you know, a lot of them had gone and followed after Absalom, and since they weren't really necessarily immediately welcomed back, they weren't necessarily immediately brought into the fold, you can see the beginnings of the seeds of rebellion that's going to happen after the death of King Solomon. You can see that already, that 12, those 12 tribes united in one kingdom, still experience some division. I mean, obviously experience some division because they just fought a civil war with a number of them going after Absalom and the others going after David.
But this is the reestablishment of David's kingdom. And what you have is, again, some cracks that are happening already. Yet, and yet, David says very clearly in 2 Samuel 19 that he ultimately wants the kingdom, the tribes of Israel, to receive him back wholeheartedly, right? He's not going to assert himself as king until they affirm him as king. And that's what happens in 2 Samuel.
We just heard today, um, just a little recap as we move forward. One of the things we're going to keep on doing is we're going to keep on noting where David acts wisely and where David acts foolishly, where David acts bravely and where David acts with craveness, right, with some cowardice. Um, because that's the truth. And the truth is we can often see in some of these characters ourselves. We can see that there's no human being that is fully good and no human being that is fully evil, but we are a mix.
Even our heroes are a mix of good and bad, of dark and light. And so it is what is one of the reminders that we all need God's grace, every one of us needing God's grace. And so we pray for each other. I'm praying for you. Please pray for me.
My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.
In today's readings, Fr. Mike points out how the loss of David's son overshadows everything else for a time. The readings are 2 Samuel 19, 1 Chronicles 24, and Psalm 38.
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