Today is the 23rd day of May. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It's

fantastic to be here with you today. I trust that it's a beautiful day wherever you are and regardless of whatever the

external weather may be I pray that it's a beautiful day inside your heart I'm glad

that we have this opportunity to come back together

around the global campfire again. It's great to be it's great to be here with

everybody in a safe place inside of a crazy world.

It's good to, we can come here and just absorb and just feast upon the scriptures.

So let's take that next step forward.

We are moving into second Samuel now,

and so our focus is shifting away from King Saul, who has died in battle, and on to David, who is now King of Judah. He's king of the tribe of Judah.

Saul has a son, his name is Ispesheth, he's been declared king of essentially the rest of Israel,

and so we've got a power struggle as we move forward into this story.

Today, 2th Samuel, chapter 2,

verse 12 through 3, verse 39.

Abner, the son of Nure, and the servants of Isbesheth, the son of Saul, traveled from Mahanayam to Gibian. David's general, Joab, whose mother was David's sister, Zaruya,

and David's servants went out to meet them at the pool of Gibeon.

Abner's forces were by one side of the pool, Joab's forces by the other.

Abner said to Joab,

why don't we send our young soldiers out to have a contest before us? And Joab said, all right, send them forward.

Twelve men came forward to represent the people of Benjamin and Ispesheth, the son of Saul, and

12 to represent David and his people.

They all caught their opponents by the head and thrust their swords into their opponent's sides,

...