Is it an injustice to treat David as a tragedy? How shall we view this great man of history? Study his life carefully in this chapter and the next to see if you can answer these questions. Then Saul was dead, and David was king in fact as well as name. We have already seen him as the shepherd boy turned warrior and as the king’s armor-bearer turned king’s outlaw by Saul’s own madness. In this chapter we read of David as king of Israel. Why are we told that Jesus shall receive “the throne of his father David” ( Luke 1:32) and that He has “the key of David”? ( Revelation 3:7). If a tragedy, why is the Messiah prophesied to sit “upon the throne of David” ( Isaiah 9:7), and be called “David their king”? ( Jeremiah 30:9 see also 23:5–6 30:15–17 Ezekiel 37:24–25). If a triumph, why, then, has “he fallen from his exaltation” ( D&C 132:39) and lost “the greatest of all the gifts of God”? ( D&C 6:13). Israel had not achieved such heights before, nor did they ever again.ĭo we emphasize the David who killed Goliath, or the David who killed Uriah? Should we view him as the servant who refused to lift his hand against the Lord’s anointed, or as the Lord’s anointed who lifted his hand against a faithful and loyal servant? Was his life a tragedy, or a triumph? For the first time, under his direction the chosen people controlled the whole land promised to Abraham’s seed nearly a thousand years earlier. Under David Israel reached its golden age, the zenith of its power. “Was David a good man?” Ask this question among Old Testament scholars, and you will likely be immediately embroiled in a vigorous debate.
“If the Latter-day Saints ever hope to make any headway with the Jewish people, they must stop talking about King David as a tragic, sinful figure, for we view him as one of the great figures of our history.” So spoke a Jewish youth to his Latter-day Saint neighbor.
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