STUDIES IN SAMUEL No. 46

2 Samuel 6:1-23

November 11, 2001

Text Comment

v.2 The large military escort provides for a grand setting appropriate to the Ark of the Covenant, given its role as the symbol of God's presence in Israel. By the way, it is probably not an accident that 30,000 is the precise number of Israelites slain in the battle when the ark was captured by the Philistines (1 Sam. 4:10).

Baalah of Judah is another name for Keriath-jearim, where the ark apparently had been since 1 Samuel 7:2, that is, since its retrieval from the Philistines. The fact that Saul had just left it there is some indication of the difference in spiritual vision that separated Saul and David.

v.3 A "new cart" is how the Philistines had sent the ark back to Israel. But that is not the way in which Israel had been commanded to carry the ark in the law of Moses. The parallel account in 1 Chronicles makes a point of noting that the ark was being improperly transported (v. 13). Notice that later in the chapter, in vv. 12-15, there is no mention of a cart as the ark is transported on to Jerusalem.

v.7 The destructive holiness of the ark had destroyed some men of Beth-Shemesh, who looked into the ark, you remember, after it was returned by the Philistines. Uzzah may have acted on impulse, but what he did was a violation of God's law and the purity of the ark and, as well, was the consequence of a set of circumstances that shouldn't have existed in the first place. That is so often so in life, isn't it? We get ourselves sinfully into a situation in which we cannot extricate ourselves without sinning further.

v.8 David's initial anger seems dangerously self-centered and disrespectful. This is the second name being given that involves the Hebrew verb meaning "to break out or through." We had another in 5:20. There the Lord broke out against Israel's enemies; here, however, against an Israelite.

v.11 Obed-Edom must have lived near the site of Uzzah's death. They were afraid to move the ark any further for fear of what else might happen.

v.12 The news of Obed-Edom's new-found prosperity convinced David that the ark might be safely moved and he made grand preparations again. But, meantime, he must have figured out the reason for the trouble on the previous occasion, because men - Chronicles tells us that they were Levites (15:26) - are carrying the ark in v. 13 and there is no mention of a cart.

v.14 The linen ephod was a priestly garment. David here is doing a priestly thing in seeing to the movement of the ark, even if he is not technically a priest himself and cannot do what priests do. In this sense, like his great descendant, he is combining in his single person the offices of king and priest. In this he is also like Melchisedek, who, long before in this same city of Jerusalem, was both king and priest.

v.15 In Psalm 47:5 we read: "God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of the trumpet" which probably alludes to this event.

v.16 We already dealt with this passage in one respect several Sundays past in comparing the account of Michal here with the one in chapter 3. But, whatever the motives that may be lurking in Michal's heart, and however David may have mistreated her, there is a case here of "like father, like daughter." Michal should care more for the ark and rejoice in its presence and she does not. [Gordon, Com, 234]

v.17 A tent, like the tabernacle no doubt, was provided for the ark until a more permanent structure could be built.

v.18 The benediction was also a priestly rite and here David performs it. This coalescing of priesthood and kingship of course prefigures the union of those offices in Jesus Christ. What is more, David is elsewhere also a prophet, hence prophet, priest, and king, as his greater descendant would be.

v.23 The major political result of the fact of Michal's barrenness is that there will be no heir to Saul's line. You will notice that three times, in vv. 16, 20, and 23, Michal is identified to us by the narrator as "the daughter of Saul" not "the wife of David."

Now, as we said last week, this second scene of the second act of 2 Samuel contributes to the account of Jerusalem taking its place as the city of God. The city was secured in chapter 5, the ark is brought to it and it becomes the center of Israelite worship in chapter 6, and a covenant is made with the house of David regarding Jerusalem's future in chapter 7. But, in this particular scene, in chapter 6, some very important perspectives are laid down. In many ways this chapter is about the right worship of God that must characterize the life of God's people. If David is to be a worthy king, he must know what right worship is and must see that it is offered in Israel.

The first thing that David does when he has secured his kingdom and chosen his capital is to bring the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. He could in no more powerful way declare that his kingdom was to be a kingdom under the rule of the Living God.

This is a chapter about right worship. The phrase "before the Lord" occurs 6 times in the chapter. You find the phrase "before the Lord" in vv. 5, 14, 16. 17, and 2x in v. 21. This chapter, in other words, concerns what is done "before the Lord," in his presence, to be sure, but also for his sake and for his honor and for his pleasure. It is a great pleasure and blessing to the worshipper, to be sure - see David leaping and dancing - but it is meant to be something that God sees and that will honor and please him. Now, there is a sense in which no matter what we are doing and no matter where we are doing it, we are "before the Lord." Psalm 139 is one of many texts that teach that wherever we go, God is there. But, there are a great many texts that also teach that there is a special sense in which we are before God when we are at worship, especially in that formal worship of the people of God, that worship that involves those acts that God has appointed for his own worship in his Word. You find this sense of worship frequently in the psalms, for example. Many of them mention the temple or the sanctuary, some of them use the term "temple" long before the building was even built, indicating that it is also a term that can be used of that place, wherever it is, where the people of God meet to worship him. You find that early use of "temple," for example in Psalm 27:4. Over and again in the Psalms the sanctuary is mentioned as the place where God's people meet with him and see him and receive help and blessing from him. Time after time there is expressed a longing to be there or a delight in having been there.

There are, at the beginning, true and pure instincts that lead David to want to bring the ark to Jerusalem. He wants to honor God. He wants the symbol of God's presence to grace his new capital. But he does not manage the transportation of the symbol of God's presence in the way appointed in God's law and, in that, he shows irreverence for God as does Uzzah in particular. And that poor man is struck dead for his irreverence. Who is he to touch the ark of God? And don't make the mistake of many who suppose that somehow this is the sort of thing that would happen in the Old Testament, but that we have nothing to fear, living as we do in the more gracious age of the New Testament. No! Remember Ananias and Sapphira? They practiced a corrupt and disobedient worship after Pentecost and were struck dead just like Uzzah. These are everlasting realities given expression in unique events. In the Old Testament and the New Testament, only a few people who profaned the worship of God dropped dead immediately on account of it. But a few do to enforce the lesson!

The problem was not with the ark, David discovered, for when it was placed at the home of Obed-Edom, that fortunate man received great blessing. Indeed, the most natural meaning of "Gittite," - Obed-Edom was a Gittite, we read in v.10 - is "someone from Gath." Gath, of course, was a Philistine city. So this man may well have been a Philistine, but, nevertheless, he was enjoying the bounty of God because the ark was with him. So, David learned not to fear the ark, but to fear the sinful way in which he had approached it in the first instance. So he went to get the ark once more and bring it to Jerusalem. When this second procession was begun again, great care was taken to give proper reverence to God by showing reverence to the symbol of his presence, the ark. The law of God was consulted and his commandments followed. Some take v. 13 to mean that every six steps there was a sacrifice offered. That seems very unlikely. But, at the outset of the procession, David will not take the seventh step, which represents the sphere of the sacred, without sacrifice. In any case, David is now recognizing the holiness of God. God is not his buddy and his holiness is a terrible as well as a wonderful thing.

"Through [the] tragedy [of Uzzah] the men of Israel [were] reminded that the ark is not an object to be handled familiarly. [And so, God, is not one to be treated familiarly.] [In a similar way] David must not try to make [the ark] serve his ambitions as king and would-be emperor; he must learn that the ark is not for manipulating. It must always command his fear and respect." [Gordon, Com, 232]

So Uzzah represents in the chapter one great mistake made in worship: an indifference to God's holiness, his transcendence; a temptation to treat him lightly, in a familiar way, and to come before him without due regard to his commandments and his judgments. This worship is the man-made worship so common in our world but often too common in the church. Man is long used to devising his own way to treat God and God's things and, of course, it makes perfect sense to him. It is only the sensible thing to steady the ark so that it will not topple onto the ground. Ah, but God can look out for himself! Remember the cattle who pulled the cart with the ark back from Philistia and brought it directly to the place where it should go, even though these were mother oxen and had calves they would not naturally leave? Draft animals held God in higher esteem than their maternal instincts, we seem to be told, and in higher esteem than Uzzah held God. God will look out for himself, it is our duty to keep his commandments. Uzzah did not know his place before God. He was too free with God, too confident, acting too much as if he were on God's own level.

Well, there has always been a great deal of this sin in the church's worship during the ages. Men inventing ways of worshipping God that have no basis in his Word. So sensible, just like Uzzah, they think their ways surely must be acceptable to God. And in how many ways has worship been transformed into activity in which God himself recedes into the distant background, until nothing really is being done "before the Lord." All of this stems from a lack of reverence for God, a diminished sense of who he is and what it means to be "before" him.

Long ago the English Congregationalist, P.T. Forsyth, saw what was happening in modern Christian worship and issued this warning.

"There are few dangers threatening the religious future more serious than the slow shallowing of the religious mind…. Our safety is in the deep. The lazy cry for simplicity is a great danger. It indicates a frame of mind which is only appalled at the great things of God, and a senility of faith which fears that which is high. Men complain that they are jaded and cannot rise to such matters. That may mean that the matters of the world absorb all the energies of the great side of the soul, that divine things are no more than a comfort. And, if so, it means much for the future of religion, and much which is ominous. And the poverty of our worship amid its very refinements, its lack of solemnity…is the fatal index of our peril." [in Wells, God in the Wasteland, 118]

Think of the many practical developments that result from a lack of true reverence for God. Sunday services that are more like sales conventions that services of worship, in which God himself has receded into the distant background. Or think of the quintessentially modern evangelical event, the TV church service. Here is Neil Postman.

"…on television, religion, like everything else, is presented, quite simply and without apology, as an entertainment. Everything that makes religion an historic, profound, and sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no tradition, no theology, and above all, no sense of spiritual transcendence. On these shows, the preacher is tops. God comes out as second banana." [Amusing Ourselves to Death, 116-117]

Uzzah represents all worship that fails to do honor to God, either by being constructed in a form that is forbidden in the Word of God, as, say we judge Roman Catholic worship to be, or by being offered in a form that treats God and his Word and presence lightly, as, we fear, too much of contemporary evangelical worship does, in which people regularly speak and behave in ways they would never speak and never behave if they found themselves visibly "before the Lord."

But Uzzah is not the only foil in this chapter, not the only representative of wrong worship. We have Michal at the other pole. She looks out her window - one scholar suggests that the window symbolizes her view of the world, her frame of mind [Fokkelmann in Waltke, notes, p. 13] - and despises David's enthusiasm, his elation, his emotion in his worship and thanksgiving to God.

Michal lacks identification with God and his grace and salvation. Her heart is not filled with joy and love at the presence of God. She worries instead about her dignity. She is, after all, a king's daughter and David, her husband, instead of acting like a king has exposed himself like common riffraff. [Alter, Com, 229] And how common has this sin been in the worship of the church. Michal went to church, no doubt, but she left her heart at home. There was no love, no delight, no singing heart when she was before the Lord. And, so, she was naturally embarrassed by a husband who was doing what she would never think to do and what seemed to her to be entirely unnatural, unseemly.

Do you know, in Christian history, what the technical term often used to describe church people who seem overly fanatical to the majority is? It is enthusiasm. The early Methodists, Whitefield and Wesley, were tarred with this brush. They were enthusiasts! Perish the thought! That we should be enthusiastic about our faith and about the God before whom we are in worship! As Lord Melbourne, British Prime Minister in the 1830s put it, "You know, things have come to a pretty pass if religion is going to become personal!"

When things become personal, of course, they touch our heart and stir our emotions. Think of the way even the most urbane people behave when they fall in love. Listen to this monstrosity from David Lloyd-Jones, the British politician and sometime Prime Minister, Winston Churchhill's older contemporary. Here he is writing a letter to his mistress. As above with Lord Melbourne, we think of British men of affairs as stiff and overly formal. Ah, but when love strikes, listen to what they become!

"When I woke up at 6 my first thought was of the loving little face engraved on my heart and I had a fierce thought to go there and then to cover it with kisses. But darling I am jealous once more. I know your thoughts are on roast mutton and partridge and chicken and potatoes and that you are longing to pass them through the lips which are mine and to bite them with luscious joy with the dazzling white teeth that I love to press. I know that today I am a little out of it and that your heart is throbbing for other thrills…Your very jealous old Lover." [Manchester, The Last Lion, vol. 1, 644]

Yuck! Well, that is what the passion of love will do to a man of letters, of the highest quality of education in literature and the use of the English language! He completely forgets himself. He behaves in an altogether unsophisticated way. He says things, he writes things that others would scorn as more than faintly ridiculous, just as Michal scorned David's leaping about. These absurd expressions of love are the equivalent of David leaping and dancing and forgetting himself before the Lord so great was his love for God and joy in God's presence. Or think of Bunyan, early on in his Christian life, telling us that one day he was so overcome with love for Christ that he says, "had I a thousand gallons of blood within my veins, I could freely…have spilt it all at the command and feet of this my Lord and Savior." Many of you believers have felt the power of this love and joy and glory. You have leapt and danced with joy, unless your fear of what others might think came in to check the power of your emotion. I have felt it and it is the most wonderful feeling in all the world! I feel it more often in this place, this house of worship, though, to be sure, not nearly as often or as powerfully as I could wish.

So, there we have true worship. It is worship that is strictly governed by the Word of God because of our fear of and reverence for God. We acknowledge willingly his transcendence, his terrible holiness, the care and submission with which we ought to come into his presence and take up his name upon our lips. But, it is worship that is full of the heart, of love, joy, and delighted thanksgiving. We see both in David here and must strive, when we are before the Lord, to be sure that we find both in ourselves. Both the fear of God and powerful delight in him.

David combines strict reverence and great joy! David was a very emotional man, of course. We see him at various times weeping, leaping and dancing for joy. He is not a phlegmatic character by any means. We are not all naturally so emotional. But, we must all have the same emotion in our worship, it must be for us as it was for him an affair of the heart.

That is difficult. We so easily fall to one side or to the other. We Presbyterians tend, of course, to fall to Michal's side more than to Uzzah's side. But either side is equally deadly! We order our worship and choose its forms to be sure that we are worshipping our God obediently and with proper reverence and fear. We kneel and stand in prayer, we choose hymns to be sung in worship, we take care of the tone of a sermon, with this great fact in view. We strive to make sure that we are worshipping God in a manner that is entirely in keeping with the teaching of God's Word. We are strict about that because we serve a holy and a precise God. We are before the living God, whose eyes are too pure to behold iniquity, who is angry with the wicked every day, whose glory no man has seen or can see and who is an unquenchable fire. But Pastor DeMass and I also lead the worship so as to try to remind us throughout that nothing short of the full engagement of our heart and our emotions is adequate to this privilege of being before the living God who loved us and saved us from sin and death. We want there to be in our hearts and in yours something of the leaping and dancing that we see here in David, something of the spontaneous the unrestrained emotion of love, joy, peace, and thanksgiving.