The Book Of Samuel
Samuel 1 & 2 are a continuation of the theme of God working through very flawed representatives. The key figure in the book of Samuel is David, one of the more recognizable people of the old testament.
Samuel, and specifically the story of David is essential to the Bible because, while David and his offspring are no less flawed than his predecessors, it is David's humility that begins the real closing story arc of the New Testament, and reveals with more clarity the nature of God.
Setting aside most of the story of David's rise, and fall (though I will cover that too), there is a key exchange between God and David that establishes the core of the Jewish and later Christian faith. David, as an honor to God after taking Jerusalem, pledges to God that he will build a lavish and permanent temple to God to house the Arc of the Covenant. Up to that point, the Jewish people had traveled with the arc and built a mobile tent, called a tabernacle, in which the arc was placed. This central focus of the Jewish faith, and the conduit through which the leaders of the Israelites communed with God, was the arc. It is at this moment that God changes everything.
God declines the offer of a permanent tabernacle in Jerusalem and instead decentralizes the faith. He responds by saying that rather than build God a temple, God would, through David, build a kingdom, beginning with David. At this point the Messianic arc of the Bible is put in clear view. It is hear that God reveals the coming of the Messiah to David on which God's kingdom on earth will be created.
This is important for two reasons, in my mind, apart from just the establishment of core religious dogma. It also signals, at a time when David could do no wrong, that David wasn't the guy for the job any more than his predecessors. It also establishes in David, a path up from the horror of the book of Judges. David is the first in the line since Moses who seems to actually repent for his sins, and accepts his own fault in his disasters.
David's fall, many of the falls from grace, is both rather the same, and different in key ways. It is the same because David's sins are multiplied in his children, David's betrayal of Uriah and sending him off to die so that he could take Uriah's wife as his own leads to his son Amnon raping his own sister Tamara, and his other son Absalom having Amnon killed... and then Absalom leads a rebellion against his own father... sending David into exile.
David's time as King begins with his lament of the death of Saul, who tried to kill David when he found that David was a challenge to is throne, and ends with David lamenting the wreckage of his own family and the death of his son who also tried to have David killed as a challenge to his throne.
the end result is that all of these people thrived when they followed God's word and advice, and like every other person since Adam and Eve, the destruction in their lives was the result of their own choice to deviate from God's word and advice.
the book ends with a repentant and broken David, his family in shambles, and his remorse for his sins. It is this key difference that keeps David on the throne, rather than buried under rubble like Samson. And this humility and acceptance of our broken nature is built on throughout the Bible.
Haha just kidding.... because...
