Before starting 2 Samuel, let me do a quick recap of what we learned in 1 Samuel. 1 Samuel starts out with the birth of Samuel. Samuel is a prophet whose sole purpose in the Bible seems to be to anoint Saul as king of the Israelites. God has Samuel anoint Saul but God quickly takes over Saul’s body making him do bad things. Yeah, I don’t get it either, but that’s the way God rolls. He’s supposedly all-powerful, but can only push his agenda by hardening hearts and forcing what may be good people into doing horrible things.
1 Samuel also introduces us to David who will eventually lead the Israelites, but not in this book. David ends up killing a giant, Goliath, with a single stone. Later he turns into a stone cold killer and cuts off the penis tips of the Philistines. Not once. Not twice. Hundreds of times! Seriously! This is not a joke!
Eventually Saul and David breakup and God tries to force Saul into killing David. God is not very good at this and is unable to cause David’s death. Not that God was really trying to kill David. It’s some sort of sick story to elevate David’s role in biblical history. David continues killing thousands, if not millions of people, including children and babies. Saul ultimately meets his demise and kills himself before being killed. The book ends there. Saul is dead, but David isn’t officially king yet.
To sum it all up, lots of killing and lots of penis hacking.
Critically Thinking Through the Bible 
In 1 Samuel 15:11 God says, “It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king.” It reminds me of that time in Genesis when God said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” What it doesn’t remind me of is an omniscient God.
LikeLiked by 1 person