II Samuel
Suppose you are a glorious professor teaching a class on the Hebrews at Northern State University. You are having trouble getting students to participate in class discussion. You want to be *sure* they have plenty to say about II Samuel and its themes. What are some of the questions you would ask to make sure the discussion of II Samuel is a profitable one?
posted by Ancient Art at 9:24 AM
7 Comments:
ONe thing I would look at is why David has so many wives. In Exodus when God gives the Isrealites hte ten commandments, one of the commandments is that a person shall not committ adultery. Well, having more than one wife is adultery, so why is David allowed to violate this law? Or, is David being punished for this when two of his sons, Amnon and Absalom are killed? After all David seems to have more kids than he can devot attention to. Also he does not punish his children when they need it, ie Amnon for rapeing Tamar, nor does David comfort Tamar after she has been rape. What is going on here? Why does David make the same mistake as Eli and Samuel? Another thing, why does David take another man's wife into his bed, when he has several other wives that he can sleep with? David has everything, but apparently he is never satisfied. Maybe he was looking for some sense of approval.
II Samuel seems to be an extension of the same problems that I Samuel explored: good, moral fathers can not discipline bad kids, whether produced or adopted. Eli with his sons, Samuel with Saul, and now David with his son all faced the same scenario. The father figure, who was going around and devoting his life to God, did not discipline the children enough to make a difference. The father figures believes that the child will correct themselves and become just like the father. However, when these children grow up in a family where the father is always traveling, the children are given no dirrection and no rules. The mother did not enforce discipline and the father was not around to discipline the child. For a class discussion to be active, you must discipline your students, unlike the father figures in I & II Samuel.
Another aspect of II Samuel that could help in facilitating discussion is why David was favored by God even though sometimes he did not do what God commanded him to do. God punished the sin of Moses by disqualifying him from entering the Promise Land. Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden for eating a piece of fruit. Yet David killed the man whose wife he lusted for, yet God found favor with him. God saw in David a man of faith who realized what he had done and repented humbly before the Lord. David recognized the sin he committed and knew he had to pay a price for that sin.
I would talk about the similarities. I think that there are a lot of them from things we have already learned or talked about. I know that one glorious professor talked about repetition in the Bible and i think there is a lot of repetition in II Samuel from previous books, mostly I Samuel. I also like the similarity to the Assyrian law where if you struck an expecting mother and that unborn child dies then your child dies. This also happens in II Samuel when David's child dies because of David's sin.
I think the biggest problem is that many of us only have one viewpoint: our own. The students need to understand that each of us understand passages differently and that this difference does not necessarily mean that it is wrong. Each of us have different backgrounds that influence how we understand what we read. Once you reach my age it is almost like wearing blinders: this is the way it has always been and I will not buy into any other viewpoint. One must keep an open mind. By participating in class and providing your understanding of particular passages/themes allows the rest of us to see a different viewpoint. For example, I never thought about the family aspect of Samuel I. I just read it at face value without giving it much thought. This class is good in that it is providing me a different viewpoint. I also found it interesting that David became king of Judah before he became king of Israel.
There are many topics that would lead to good discussion in the book of II Samuel. I find the story of David and Bathsheba to be one of them. David wanted to have Bathseba and he got her, however not by fair means. After his actions, Nathan told David a story about s rich man and a poor man. This illustrates how David thinks. He thinks actions like his are wrong - yet he refused to put two and two together to figure out that his actions were just like the one's between the rich man and the poor man.
I think a good discussion topic could be centered around this idea and why the writer included this story. Was it just to show that David is not perfect, or was it for more reasons than that?
In today's society we have slang for different meanings. I came across a what i believe to be slang and couldn't quite figure it out, although the answer was right in front of me i was probably to blind to see it....but what does the phrase "Am I a dog's head" mean in Chapter 3 verse 8? Just curious here.
My theme would have to be a little shepard that became king. My discusion question would be: how is it that a little man not of any noble family and of so little significance com to power with only one acton of bravery. Then ask why does he stray from what got him to the position of power.
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