Controversy over the throne

Hello Everyone: 

Yeah….  We are in the book of Kings.  In our lesson today, David is near death and his oldest son after Absalom which was called Adonijah was trying to take over the throne.   Now, we know that historically the next king of Israel will be Solomon, the son of David and Bathsheba yet Solomon’s rise to power was not a smooth transition.   Let’s look at the story.

I Kings 1: 1 When King David was old and well advanced in years, he could not keep warm even when they put covers over him. 2 So his servants said to him, “Let us look for a young virgin to attend the king and take care of him. She can lie beside him so that our lord the king may keep warm.” 3 Then they searched throughout Israel for a beautiful girl and found Abishag, a Shunammite, and brought her to the king. 4 The girl was very beautiful; she took care of the king and waited on him, but the king had no intimate relations with her. 5 Now Adonijah, whose mother was Haggith, put himself forward and said, “I will be king.” So he got chariots and horses^a ready, with fifty men to run ahead of him. 6 (His father had never interfered with him by asking, “Why do you behave as you do?” He was also very handsome and was born next after Absalom.) 7 Adonijah conferred with Joab son of Zeruiah and with Abiathar the priest, and they gave him their support. 8 But Zadok the priest, Benaiah son of Jehoiada, Nathan the prophet, Shimei and Rei^b and David’s special guard did not join Adonijah. 9 Adonijah then sacrificed sheep, cattle and fattened calves at the Stone of Zoheleth near En Rogel. He invited all his brothers, the king’s sons, and all the men of Judah who were royal officials, 10 but he did not invite Nathan the prophet or Benaiah or the special guard or his brother Solomon.

As you see in our opening, David is old and was having problems with staying warm no matter how many covers was placed over him.   He was brought a young concubine to sleep with him in order to raise his body temperature, yet the text is clear that they have no sexual relations.   Some rabbinical literature has even suggested that David being placed in the bed with a beautiful woman and not being able to perform sexually shows that the king was near death.

David’s oldest living son Adonijah seeks allies to proclaim himself as king seeing that his father will be dead soon and gets some very strategic people in David’s court to align himself with him. 

He offers a sacrifice signifying that the kingdom was to be turned over to him.

Tomorrow, we will study both David & Bathsheba’s response to this action.

Stay encouraged and don’t forget to pray and read God’s word daily.

This entry was posted on 25. March 2010 at 12:46 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.