Scripture Daily

Context No. 2447 of 4322 · 2 Samuel

Context · Reflection

2 Samuel 5:1-5: in context

1Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and spoke, saying, “Behold, we are your bone and your flesh. 2In times past, when Saul was king over us, it was you who led Israel out and in. The LORD said to you, ‘You will be shepherd of my people Israel, and you will be prince over Israel.’” 3So all the elders of Israel came to the king to Hebron, and King David made a covenant with them in Hebron before the LORD; and they anointed David king over Israel. 4David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. 5In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty-three years over all Israel and Judah.

At last all the tribes of Israel come to David at Hebron and make him king. We are your own flesh and blood, they say, and the LORD promised you would shepherd his people. He is anointed king over all Israel, thirty years old, having already reigned over Judah alone for seven years, and long before that having been anointed as a boy in his father's house. The throne he was promised as a youth finally becomes his.

Count the years between the promise and its keeping. David was anointed by Samuel while still a shepherd boy, then spent years running from Saul, then ruled a fraction of the nation, before this day when the whole promise came true. God's word to him did not fail, but it also did not hurry. The waiting was long and often bitter, and none of it canceled what God had said. The delay was not denial; it was the slow road the promise took to its fulfillment.

Am I reading a long delay as God's denial, when it may simply be the slow road his promise is taking to come true?

Sources