Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we start at our 11th book of the Bible, and we're 30% of the way through. Can you believe it?

Let's jump into 2nd Samuel. Israel is going through a tough time.

First, their prophet Samuel died, then their first king and three of his sons died in a battle,

where they also lost a lot of land to one of their fiercest enemies. Fortunately, it seems like

some people have heard the news that Samuel had appointed the next king before he died,

so there's a rough idea of what

will happen next, but there's no precedent for this and no specific plan in place for how to move

things forward. They're building the plane while flying it, so to speak. Meanwhile, David has been living

at his refugee home in Philistia, and he's just defeated the Amalekites. So to make sure we have it

all straight, we've just gone through

two simultaneous battles, the battle of Israel and Saul against the Philistines, which Israel lost,

and the battle of David in Philistia against the Amalekites, which David won. Confused yet,

don't worry about it. The vital parts will all make sense. First, there's this. David wasn't

anywhere near the battle Saul was fighting. He was a three days journey away. But an excited messenger

decided to make that trek to tell David what he thought would be good news. Hey, guess what?

Your enemy is dead. But this guy obviously doesn't know David's character. David does not rejoice at this.

And on top of that,

the messenger seems to think he can score some extra points with the future king by claiming responsibility for killing the old king. But you may have noticed a discrepancy in the messenger's

story and the story scripture told us yesterday in 1st Samuel 31, which says that Saul fell on his

own sword.

So there's a good chance this guy is making things up to earn favor, but what he's actually doing is digging his own grave. Since David doesn't have access to 1st Samuel 31 like we do,

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