Hey, this is Shelby and Scott. We're going to be in First Chronicles 19 through 21 today.

Scott, there's a lot of fighting, a lot of battles in today's chapters. Yeah. There's a lot of fighting in today's chapters.

Yeah, and this is a spot, Shelby, where again, you start to see some really big differences

between Chronicles and then Samuel and Kings, because, okay, basically, First Chronicles,

18, 19, and 20, just those three chapters cover the period of time that was covered in Second Samuel 8 to 21, so 14 chapters.

Wow.

So it's a huge, huge span of history covered much, much more briefly. But, you know, remember, we've talked about this. Chronicles is a largely positive retelling of the history of Israel.

And so all the stuff in Second Samuel in this section with Bathsheba and Uriah, David's son, Absalom, seizing the throne.

None of that is here. And again, the point's not to pretend like it didn't happen. It's not to whitewash history or anything.

It's just rather to focus on what

David got right. And a big thing David got right was preparing things for the temple to be built.

And so all the battles we read about today in 18 through 20, it does a couple of things by recording

these. First, the victories that God gives to David

prepares for the temple's construction by showing how David subdues their surrounding enemies

by giving the nation peace. Secondly, all the battles explain why David couldn't be the one to build

the temple. To peek a little bit ahead into tomorrow, in 22.8, he's called a man of war. So God would therefore leave

the temple to be constructed by Solomon, who's described in the next verse, as a man of rest.

And then I love this verse that God says in that chapter, actually, I will give peace and quiet

to Israel during his reign, during Solomon. And so David helped to accomplish that, though, by what we read about in today's chapters.

Through all the victories he gave them, Israel was able to experience peace.

Yeah, and then we get to chapter 21, and we talked about how Chronicles is a positive retelling,

but I'm not getting the positive vibe from Chapter 21.

...