David

David is invoked here as the implicit contrast to Edom's impermanent kings — his throne is the one God promised would last forever, making every short-lived Edomite succession point forward to something greater.

David is referenced here through Jonathan's identity — Jonathan is described as David's closest friend, deepening the personal weight of these battlefield deaths.

David is here receiving the long-awaited moment of coronation — the tribes come to him, recite his history as their true leader, and the elders formally anoint him king over all Israel at Hebron.

David is in hiding at Ziklag when the Benjaminite warriors arrive — still a fugitive, not yet king — which makes the loyalty of Saul's own tribesmen especially striking.

David is consulting his military leaders and presenting his vision to the full assembly, modeling collective discernment before launching his plan to retrieve the Ark.

David is receiving Hiram's gifts of cedar and skilled craftsmen, and the text notes his key response: he recognized God's hand behind the honor, not his own achievement.

David is shown here taking deliberate, preparatory action — building a tent for the Ark and declaring that only the Levites may carry it, correcting the procedural failure of his first attempt.

David is personally overseeing the Ark's placement and then distributing bread, meat, and raisins to every Israelite — turning a religious ceremony into a national feast.

David is sitting in his cedar palace, feeling the moral tension between his own luxury and the tent-dwelling Ark, and bringing that concern directly to Nathan the prophet.

David is here the conquering king subduing both the Philistines and Moabites, transforming former enemies into tribute-paying subjects under Israelite authority.

David is here recalling a debt of kindness owed to the late king Nahash, and acting on it by dispatching a condolence delegation — a straightforward act of honor that his counterpart will catastrophically misinterpret.

David is revealed here as the seventh son of Jesse — not the firstborn, not the obvious heir, but the one the entire genealogical thread has been quietly leading toward, placed at the center of Judah's family record.

David is conspicuously absent from the battle, remaining in Jerusalem while Joab fights — a detail the Chronicler records without comment, though readers of 2 Samuel know exactly what happened during that stay.

David receives Satan's suggestion and acts on it, ordering a military census despite having no strategic need — his willingness to act on the whisper reveals how deeply pride had taken root.

David is immediately mobilizing labor and materials after witnessing God's dramatic response on Ornan's threshing floor, stockpiling stone, iron, bronze, and cedar in quantities that far exceed what any single building campaign would require.

David is quoted directly here announcing the breakdown of 38,000 Levites into four precise divisions — revealing a king who organized worship with the same strategic mind he once applied to battle.

David is acting here as the organizer who brings in Zadok and Ahimelech to build a proportional, transparent system — ensuring neither priestly branch could claim favoritism.

David appears here as the primary contributor to the dedicated treasuries, alongside family heads and military officers — his battle spoils consecrated for the ongoing maintenance of God's house.

David is the architect of a twelve-division rotating military system, ensuring 288,000 soldiers cycle through active duty without burnout — a model of proactive, systems-level leadership.

David is summoning Israel's entire leadership to Jerusalem for what amounts to his farewell assembly, opening with a candid admission that his greatest ambition was denied by God.

David stands before the full national assembly to publicly disclose both the scale of the project and his own personal financial contribution, modeling the generosity he's about to invite everyone else to join.

David is the subject of this family record, listed here as the father of six sons born during his early reign in Hebron — each by a different mother, each carrying a complicated future.

David is mentioned here as the most significant descendant that Judah's tribal line will produce, establishing why this genealogy matters beyond a simple family record.

David is credited here with building the first organized worship team — after the Ark came to rest in Jerusalem, he created a structured musical ministry staffed by credentialed Levites.

David is referenced here as the recipient of the kingdom after Saul's fall — the reason Saul's family line might have been expected to disappear from history entirely, making its continuation all the more striking.

David is referenced here as the king who personally appointed Asaph and Jeduthun as worship leaders — the returning Levites are the descendants of the system he built, picking up where their ancestors left off.

David is receiving the messenger's report and pressing him for details — the man who spent years fleeing Saul is now processing the news that his pursuer and his best friend are both gone.

David is sending a diplomatic condolence delegation to Hanun, acting on a genuine sense of loyalty to the late king Nahash — a gesture that will be catastrophically misinterpreted.

David is absent from the battlefield where he belongs, and his idle wandering on the palace roof sets the entire catastrophe in motion — his proximity to power and distance from duty is the first failure.

David is being set up by his own sense of justice — his outrage at the fictional rich man is completely genuine, which makes the trap all the more devastating when it snaps shut.

David is introduced as Amnon's father and the king of Israel — the man with ultimate authority over this household, whose failure to protect Tamar is the central moral tragedy of the chapter.

David is the target of Joab's scheme — a king whose blind spot about his own family situation makes him vulnerable to the very trick being set up against him.

David is completely deceived here — he hears a pious request from his son and sends him off with a blessing, having no idea he's just given the green light to his own overthrow.

David is a vulnerable, exhausted fugitive when Ziba intercepts him — making him dangerously susceptible to a one-sided story that strips Mephibosheth of his property.

David is described here as the target of Ahithophel's plan — exhausted, demoralized, and the single man Ahithophel argues must be eliminated to end the conflict cleanly.

David is organizing his army for battle but reveals his true priority by publicly ordering his commanders to spare Absalom — the general is subordinating military logic to a father's love.

David is sitting paralyzed in grief when Joab confronts him — and, chastened by that rebuke, he finally rises and takes his seat at the gate so the people can come to him.

David is the king whose contested return from exile has just triggered a tribal argument, making him the flashpoint around which the northern tribes rally against or abandon.

David has waited three full years before finally seeking God about the famine, and here he receives the answer that forces him to confront Saul's legacy.

David opens the song by piling up names for God — rock, fortress, shield, stronghold — each one drawn from personal experience of being protected through impossible circumstances.

David is delivering his final oracle, framing his own words as Spirit-spoken prophecy and reflecting on the covenant God made with him — a king taking stock of a lifetime of leadership.

David is here making the fateful decision to order a military census, shifting his confidence from God to measurable military strength — the act that sets the entire chapter's tragedy in motion.

David is establishing his family during his reign at Hebron, fathering six sons by six different wives — a list that foreshadows both his consolidating power and the family dysfunction to come.

David is noted as Jonathan's closest friend, contextualizing why the aside about Mephibosheth matters — David's future act of loyalty to this boy will be rooted in this covenant friendship.

David is at Hebron receiving the tribal representatives, about to be formally crowned king over a unified Israel after years of ruling only Judah.

David is organizing a massive national procession to retrieve the Ark, leading thirty thousand men in a joyful celebration — the king himself is orchestrating and leading this act of national worship.

David is sitting in his cedar palace feeling the dissonance between his own fine home and God's tent-housed ark, and sincerely proposes to build God a proper dwelling.

David is shown here having come full circle — the man who once faked insanity to survive among the Philistines is now the one stripping away their seat of authority.

David is asking an unexpected question — actively searching for survivors of Saul's family to bless rather than neutralize, driven by his covenant loyalty to the late Jonathan.

David is referenced here only as the unnamed man after God's own heart — already chosen as Saul's replacement before he's even appeared in the story, waiting in the wings.

David is the absent son Jesse didn't think to include in the lineup — still out in the fields with the sheep while seven older brothers stand before the prophet inside.

David is introduced as a background character — Jesse's youngest son, splitting time between tending sheep and playing music at court, with no apparent role in the unfolding military crisis.

David is the unlikely recipient of Jonathan's covenant loyalty — a shepherd kid from Bethlehem whom the crown prince immediately recognizes as someone marked by God, worth giving up everything for.

David is the innocent target Jonathan is defending — his record of faithful service becomes the very argument Jonathan uses to persuade Saul to stand down.

David arrives before Jonathan in a state of bewildered desperation, pressing his case that Saul's murderous intent is real despite Jonathan's disbelief.

David arrives at Nob alone and immediately begins lying to Ahimelech, fabricating a royal mission to obtain food — his desperation overriding his integrity.

David is hiding in the cave of Adullam, becoming an unlikely rallying point for the desperate and marginalized — four hundred outcasts who chose a fugitive as their leader.

David is actively seeking God's direction before committing his men to battle, modeling a pattern of divine consultation before action that defines his leadership throughout this chapter.

David holds the knife and the moment, but pulls back — cutting only a corner of Saul's robe and then rebuking his own conscience for even that much, refusing to seize what God hasn't yet given him.

David is living as a wilderness fugitive here, relying on informal economies of protection and reciprocity — his polite request to Nabal reflects the vulnerable position he and his men are in.

David is being hunted again, having sent scouts to confirm Saul's approach — a man who despite doing nothing wrong must operate like a fugitive in his own country.

David is being strategically shrewd here — his request to relocate out of Achish's capital sounds deferential but is actually a calculated move to gain operational independence far from Philistine oversight.

David gives a deliberately ambiguous answer to Achish's war summons — neither committing to fight Israel nor refusing outright, stalling for time while trapped in a situation of his own making.

David is shown here marching at the rear of the Philistine army with his men — the anointed future king of Israel visibly out of place, walking deeper into an inescapable trap.

David returns from three days away to find his home city burned and his family taken — he and his men weep until physically exhausted, then face a near-mutiny.

David is referenced here as the absent friend whose bond with Jonathan gives the loss added weight — Jonathan died protecting a kingdom that was already destined to pass to David.

David is referenced as part of the long chain of consequences flowing from this chapter's decision — the monarchy Israel demanded here is the institution that will eventually produce him.

David is mentioned here to explain why the Ark of the Covenant was absent from Gibeon — he had already relocated it to Jerusalem, splitting the sacred objects between two worship sites.

David is invoked in the people's parting declaration as the ancestor whose dynasty they are now rejecting — the house of David, once the unifying symbol of the whole nation, is now the rallying point only for the south.

David is referenced here as the standard of faithfulness — the three-year period of Rehoboam's stability is measured by how closely his reign follows the pattern David established.

David is invoked as the covenant recipient whose dynasty was permanently sealed by God — the theological cornerstone of Abijah's argument that the northern kingdom has no legitimate claim to sovereignty.

David's name marks the burial city — Jerusalem, the city of David — where Asa is laid to rest with royal honors, a dignified ending that stands in painful contrast to the spiritual diminishment of his final years.

David is invoked as the specific historical model Jehoshaphat chose to emulate — notably the earlier, wholehearted David, not the later David whose moral failures complicated his legacy.

David is invoked here as the precedent for the Solomon-Hiram partnership — Solomon appeals to his father's existing working relationship to open the door for his own request.

David is invoked here as the reason God refuses to destroy Jehoram's dynasty — the covenant made with David centuries earlier is the only thing protecting Judah from total judgment.

David's royal line is referenced here as the thread that Jehoshabeath's act of courage preserves — the entire Davidic covenant hangs on the survival of the infant Joash hidden in the Temple.

David is invoked here as the divine authority behind the entire operation — Jehoiada's appeal is not to politics but to God's promise about David's line, which legitimizes Joash's claim to the throne.

David's city is where Amaziah is ultimately buried — a formal honor that stands in ironic tension with the inglorious arc of his reign, laid to rest among his ancestors despite dying as a fugitive.

David is invoked here as the gold standard of Israelite kingship — the benchmark against whom Hezekiah is directly compared, signaling that this new king represents a genuine dynastic reset.

David is mentioned here as the one to whom God appeared at this specific threshing floor — his encounter with God on this site is the direct reason Solomon builds the Temple here.

David's name appears here as the historical identifier for the original city section — Hezekiah is reinforcing the Millo, a fortification in the oldest part of Jerusalem associated with David's reign.

David is invoked here as the righteous standard Josiah consciously chose to emulate — bypassing generations of corrupt kings to align himself with Israel's model king.

David is cited here as one of the authoritative sources Josiah appeals to for organizing the Passover — his written instructions about Levitical assignments form part of the blueprint being followed.

David appears here as the unseen contributor whose years of material preparation now find their proper home — he never laid a stone, yet his fingerprints are all over the finished Temple.

David is honored here as the one whose heart longed to build the Temple — God affirmed his desire even while telling him he wouldn't be the one to see it through, leaving the task to Solomon.

David is honored posthumously here — the instruments the Levites played and the songs they sang were both his designs and compositions, meaning his worship filled the Temple his son built.

David is credited here as the architect of the worship system that Solomon implements — the priestly divisions, Levitical roles, and gatekeeper assignments all trace back to David's earlier instructions.