2 Sam. 21-24 is placed at the end of the Book of Samuel as one single unit. There is a literary coherence that these chapters are arranged in a chiastic structure:[1]
Outer Circle: Two Narratives (21:1-14; 24:1-25)
Inner Circle: Two Lists (21:15-22; 23:8-39)
Center: Two Songs (22:1-51; 23:1-7)
It’s obvious that the narrator uses this literary structure to deliver a message about the rise and rule of David. The center piece of this literary unit is the words of David to God (the first song) and the words of God to David (the second song). Even though this literary unit as a whole presents David with irony and criticism, his relationship with God (or God’s relationship with him) still dominates the attention of the text. The first song was spoken by the young David when God delivered him from Saul (22:1); the second song came from the mouth of David in his old age (23:1). In spite of David’s ups and downs of life as a person, a father, and a king, the narrator recognizes David’s life of prayer and holiness and invites us to focus on his engagement with God and God’s graciousness towards David.
From being delivered from enemies to being raised up on high, from being insignificant to being anointed by God (22:1; 23:1; 1 Sam. 16:11), from a powerless son to a powerful king, how did David reflect the life of God in Him? David struggled with sex, power, and politics and certainly suffered from them. He also struggled with God the Almighty. He prayed to God because of his problems; these problems brought him before the throne of grace. To a certain extent, David’s problems became the means for him to relate to God. His problems helped him understand himself as sinner and God as savior. “In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I called. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry came to his ears” (21:7, ESV). “For who is God, but the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God?” (Ps. 18:31, ESV)
Kenneth Leech notes:
So what is prayer? It is a ‘sharing in the divine nature’, a ‘taking of manhood into God’…In the words of the eastern teacher St Gregory of Sinai, ‘Prayer is God’. When we think about prayer, we are thinking about God, and about human consciousness of God…Prayer is God. It is the movement of God to man, and of man to God, the rhythm of encounter and response. In this sense, all Christian life, all discipleship, is prayer.[2]
Prayer is God. David’s prayer is about God. David encountered God in prayer; God responded to David in listening and answering. Prayer is a communion with the Divine and the accommodation of the Divine. The two songs invite us to engage with God in prayer like the way David engaged with God.
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