David and thirty thousand men set out to fetch the Ark of Covenant, "which is called by the name...of the Lord Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim that are on the ark", and bring it to Jerusalem. After all that has happened, they still believe God is in the box. We can be so stubborn in our beliefs, but we need to live by experience and not by tradition. Before the ark reaches Jerusalem however, one of the men who is guarding it reaches out and touches it, and he is struck down for his irreverence. This scares David and he refuses to bring the ark into the city, taking it instead to a man named Obed-Edom, but the Lord blesses Obed-Edom and his household, and so David changes his mind and brings the ark into the city with much rejoicing. We do not need to fear God, we only need to give him the respect he deserves.
When his wife Michal sees him dancing in front of the ark she despises him, and when he returns home that night she chastises him for acting "as any vulgar fellow would". David replies that he did not dance before the people but before the Lord, declaring that he will celebrate the Lord and will become even more undignified, even so that he is humiliated in his own eyes. God doesn't want to humiliate us, but sometimes following him will make us stand out or look a little odd, and so we need to be as fearless in our worship as David is. If we're living for God, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.
David has settled into Jerusalem and been granted a reprieve from his enemies, and now he gets to thinking. He remarks to the prophet Nathan that he is living in a palace of cedar while the Lord is still living in a tent, and Nathan tells him to go ahead with whatever he has in mind because the Lord is with him. God has other ideas however, and that night he speaks to Nathan, saying that he has not live in a house since he brought the Israelites out of Egypt, and it is not for David to build him one now. He does say that he has been moving from place to place with a tent as his dwelling, and so perhaps I have been wrong to presume that God has always been omnipresent, but I think the point he is making is that he cannot be contained or controlled except by his own power or command.
God then makes a covenant with David as he did with Abraham, promising that he will make his name great and provide a place for his people so that they will not be disturbed or oppressed. He also declares that he will establish his house forever and raise up a son who will be the one to build a house for his Name, and promises that he will punish this son through other men but he will never take his love away from him as he did from Saul. I find the idea of God taking his love away from anyone difficult as it doesn't fit with what I know and believe of God, and so I have tried to skim over it or explain it away, but the truth is that all relationships develop over time. Perhaps the writers of scripture only thought that God had taken his love from Saul because of what happened to him, but perhaps here we see a progression in God's relationship with man as his love becomes unconditional for the first time. It is clear that God never gave up on the Israelites completely and so there was always an element of unconditionality, but people stop loving people all the time, and so we would be in no position to judge God if he ever did the same.
When Nathan tells David all of this, he goes to sit before the Lord and speak with him. He expresses amazement at all God has done and promised to do, and he praises him and his people Israel. He says that God is trustworthy, and he calls on him to keep his word and bless his house. I have been quite critical about the Israelites' belief that God dwells in one place, and therefore that they must approach the ark or use divination to speak with him, but if their relationship with God was different then I must be open to the possibility that this is how they had to communicate with him. At any rate, I think there is some value in approaching God as David does. I believe that we can speak to God whenever and wherever we choose, but sometimes we need to take time out to really focus on him, and it can be helpful mark that time as special by using a stimulus or going to a church.
The reprieve does not last long and David is soon fighting again. He defeats the Philistines and takes some of their land, then despite having previously sought refuge in their land, he defeats the Moabites. In a bizarre and somewhat sadistic ritual which would not be out of place in a horror film, he makes the survivors lie end to end then measures them off with a length of rope, killing two lengths then letting the third live. He goes on defeat the king of Zibah, make the Arameans of Damascus subject to him, increase his wealth with plunder and tributes, and win fame after striking down eighteen thousand Edomites. It seems that we are meant to be okay with this because he's David and because the Lord is on his side, but I think we're allowed to say that we don't agree with his aggressive and greedy behaviour, and we can certainly reject any suggestion that it justifies similar actions now.
David seems determined to show his softer side, and declares that he wants to show kindness to the house of Saul for Jonathon's sake. He finds Jonathon's crippled son Mephibosheth, restores to him all that belonged to Saul, set Saul's servant Ziba to manage the land, and says he will always eat at his table. There's an episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor says that a person can slaughter millions and still live with themselves because once in a while they happen to be kind, and this feels a little like that, but one kindness can not compensate for or wipe out a thousand cruelties. If we want to be good people then we have to be good people all the time, not just when it suits us.
The king of the Ammonites dies and David sends messengers to express his sympathies to his son Hanun, but Hanun's men think that David's men are spies, and so they shave off half their beads and cut their robes. I don't know if these actions had any particular symbolic significance beyond humiliating the men, but I think that itself was probably enough. When Hanun realises that he has angered David, he decides that attack is the best from of defence and hires an army, so David marches out to meet him. The Israelite army is surrounded, but despite this tactical advantage, the Ammonites flee and are defeated. In this way David not only puts down a threat, but also scares a number of other kings into making peace with him. So far, his reign appears to be a political, financial and military success.
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