I received some clarity from this chapter! Did you? Way back in 2 Samuel 13, I was under the impression for some reason that Bathsheba was Absalom’s mother. I don’t know why. I went back to the chapter and read it, and it doesn’t say anything of the sort. However, it does tell us something that kind of conflicts with this chapter. It hit me that I’d been wrong in my thinking after I read verse 5, where it says that Bathsheba’s father is Ammiel. I remembered looking that up a few weeks ago and writing about it in a previous post. So, I went back there to double check some things. In 2 Samuel, Chapter 13, Bathsheba’s father is called Eliam. Eliam, Ammiel … same, same? I’m not sure what happened there. I just know it made me curious, and it also made me realize that Absalom was not Bathsheba’s son.
And just look at David’s family tree, would ya??? We knew David had a lot of wives and girlfriends and children, but this puts a new perspective on his life. I found lots of curious things in his lineage. For one, Absalom, who sort of became David’s successor, was third in line for the throne. We know from past chapters that Absalom killed Amnon for raping Tamar, but where did Daniel come from??? Boom. Outta nowhere, I guess. Then look allllll the way down, past David’s fourth, fifth, sixth and who-knows-how-many-other children, until you get to Bathsheba, who David married after many of his other children were born. Bathsheba was the mother of Solomon, who we all know eventually inherited the throne for realz (unlike Absalom) from his father King David. Why so many skips??? We knew Solomon wasn’t David’s first child from past chapters, but we had no idea how far from the top of the line he really was until now. And even this doesn’t list all of David’s children, I’m positively sure of that.
We don’t get to see much about Solomon’s children, either, as the text lists Solomon’s descendants by generation, rather than by his sons (and daughters). If you notice, all the names listed as Solomon’s descendants are/were the future/past kings of Judah. Cool, huh?
And the last part of this chapter is capped with the descendants of Josiah, which goes down to Jehoiachin, the reigning king with whom we left off at the end of 2 Kings (and, spoiler alert, who will round out the Chronicles). Even cooler, huh?
I hope you think so because this is only the beginning! We’re going to start getting deeper and deeper into the descendants of Israel – OUR DESCENDANTS. We don’t have to go to ancestrydotcom and pay $14.99 a month. Ezra did some of the work for us and recorded it on these pages. ❤
Writing prompt: think back
Did the descendants of David spark any memories or “Eureka!” moments for you? Write about at least one realization you had after/while reading today’s text.
jugglingfire.com 