The City of David
1 Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and spoke, saying, “Behold, we are your bone and your flesh. 2 In times past, when Saul was king over us, it was you who led Israel out and in. Yahweh said to you, ‘You will be shepherd of my people Israel, and you will be prince over Israel.’” 3 So all the elders of Israel came to the king to Hebron, and King David made a covenant with them in Hebron before Yahweh; and they anointed David king over Israel. 4 David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. 5 In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty-three years over all Israel and Judah. 6 The king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who spoke to David, saying, “The blind and the lame will keep you out of here,” thinking, “David can’t come in here.” 7 Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion. This is David’s city. 8 David said on that day, “Whoever strikes the Jebusites, let him go up to the watercourse and strike those lame and blind, who are hated by David’s soul.” Therefore they say, “The blind and the lame can’t come into the house.” 9 David lived in the stronghold, and called it David’s city. David built around from Millo and inward. 10 David grew greater and greater, for Yahweh, the God of Armies, was with him. 11 Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David, with cedar trees, carpenters, and masons; and they built David a house. 12 David perceived that Yahweh had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for his people Israel’s sake. 13 David took more concubines and wives for himself out of Jerusalem, after he had come from Hebron; and more sons and daughters were born to David. 14 These are the names of those who were born to him in Jerusalem: Shammua, Shobab, Nathan, Solomon, 15 Ibhar, Elishua, Nepheg, Japhia, 16 Elishama, Eliada, and Eliphelet.
Twenty years after the oil, the whole nation comes to Hebron — and the new king takes a town nobody had ever taken and makes it his own.
1 Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and spoke, saying, “Behold, we are your bone and your flesh. 2 In times past, when Saul was king over us, it was you who led Israel out and in. Yahweh said to you, ‘You will be shepherd of my people Israel, and you will be prince over Israel.’”
The northern elders give three reasons and they are worth separating: kinship, a service record, and last, the word of God — you will be shepherd of my people Israel 2 Samuel 5:2. The order is honest about how nations decide things. And what follows is not simply an acclamation: King David made a covenant with them in Hebron before Yahweh 2 Samuel 5:3 — a negotiated agreement with terms, made in God's presence, before the anointing. Israel's monarchy is contractual from its second king onward, which is why the north can later claim the contract has been broken 1 Kings 12:4.
This is David's third anointing — private in Bethlehem, by Judah at Hebron, now by all Israel — with roughly twenty years between the first and the last.
The king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who spoke to David, saying, “The blind and the lame will keep you out of here,” thinking, “David can’t come in here.”
The Jebusites' taunt measures their confidence: the ridge was so defensible that a garrison of invalids could hold it, and it had in fact stood unconquered since the settlement Joshua 15:63 Judges 1:21. David takes it by the watercourse 2 Samuel 5:8 — the shaft that brought water inside the walls, the one weakness of a city on a rock — and the taunt becomes a local saying instead of a defense.
The choice of capital is the shrewdest decision of the reign. Jerusalem sat on the border between Judah and Benjamin, belonging to neither, so a united kingdom got a capital that owed nothing to either bloc. Every king of Judah after him rules from a city taken by his own men, which is why it is called David's city and never the tribe's.
David grew greater and greater, for Yahweh, the God of Armies, was with him.
The narrator's explanation is flat and repeated, and the next verses show what it looked like from outside: Tyre sends cedar and craftsmen, a palace goes up, and David perceived that Yahweh had established him king over Israel — with the reason given in the same breath, for his people Israel's sake 2 Samuel 5:12. The office is understood as a trust held for others, which is the theology that makes chapter eleven so grave.
And one line sits in the middle of the success without comment: David took more concubines and wives for himself out of Jerusalem 2 Samuel 5:13. The law had warned against exactly this Deuteronomy 17:17. Solomon's name appears in the list of sons that follows, and so do the rivalries that will tear the house apart.
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