Our last message from 2 Samuel ended with David finally becoming king over all of Israel! He began to rule over just one tribe of Israel – the tribe of Judah – when he was 30 years old – and he waited another seven and a half years before he was finally invited to be king over all of Israel.
2 Samuel 5:4 says..
4 David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years in all. 5 He had reigned over Judah from Hebron for seven years and six months, and from Jerusalem he reigned over all Israel and Judah for thirty-three years.
2 Samuel 5:4-5
Now you’ll noticed that when David ruled over just Judah – his capital city was the city of Hebron. This was certainly a significant city in Judah – actually I read in my devotions this week that this was where Abraham spent a lot of time. He built an altar there and when his wife Sarah died – she was buried in that area. This was also the city that Caleb (one of the 12 spies that gave a good report to Moses) – this was the city that was given to him as his inheritance from the Lord. Later it would become one of the cities of refuge and would belong to the descendants of the high priest. So Hebron had a long and important history for the Israelites.
However, when David began to rule over all Israel, he moved his capital city to Jerusalem. This was a city that up until this point had not really been a significant city for the Israelites. In fact, at this time, Jerusalem wasn’t even an Israelite city! It was a fortress within Israelite territory but it was controlled by the Jebusites – some of the original inhabitants of the land.
However, today we’re going to see that conquering this fortress and making it his new capital city would be David’s first priority as the new king of Israel.
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