Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we start at our 11th book of the Bible and we're 30% of the way through.

Can you believe it?

Let's jump into 2nd Samuel.

Israel is going through a tough time.

First, their prophet Samuel died, then their

first king and three of his sons died in a battle where they also lost a lot of

land to one of their fiercest enemies. Fortunately, it seems like some people have heard the news that Samuel had

appointed the next king before he died, so there's a rough idea of what will

happen next, but there's no precedent for this and no specific plan in place for

how to move things forward. They're building the plane while

flying it, so to speak. Meanwhile, David has been living at his refugee home in Felicia,

and he's just defeated the Amalekites. So to make sure we have it all straight, we've just

gone through two simultaneous battles, the Battle of Israel and Saul against the Philistines,

which Israel lost, and the Battle of David in Felistia against the Amalekites, which David won.

Confused yet, don't worry about it. The vital parts will all make sense.

First, there's this.

David wasn't anywhere near the battle Saul was fighting. He was a three days journey away.

But an excited messenger decided to make that trek to tell David what he thought would be good news.

Hey, guess what? Your enemy is dead. But this guy obviously doesn't

know David's character. David does not rejoice at this. And on top of that the

messenger seems to think he can score some extra points with the future king

...