Why David Loved the Law

“The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb. By them your servant is warned; in keeping them there is great reward.”

- Psalm 19:7-11

When I left off last month I wrote about how Paul viewed the law as a Pharisee. This week I would like to look at how David viewed the law. The Psalms are filled with David’s love for the law and his desire to obey the Lord. But in Acts 15:10 Peter calls the law “a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear.” Did the law change from the time of David to the time of Acts?

Although many Orthodox will tell you it is a joy to follow the law, and I believe for many who do so it can be, but I do not believe that David is talking about the law in the same form that Peter is.

Did you ever play whisper down the lane?  We used to play it in elementary school.  The teacher would line up all the kids in the class.  The first kid would whisper a message to the second kid and the second kid would try to repeat the same message to the third kid.  Then the third to the fourth and so on down the line until we got to the last kid who would then share the message with the class to see how close it was to the original message.  Needless to say, the message always seemed to be completely different from what the original message was.  Who knows how many times it was misunderstood, rephrased or deliberately changed along the way.  

The Rabbis tell us there were two forms of the law.  The written law which Moses wrote down, and the oral law which Moses passed on to the judges.  The Rabbis tell us this law was passed on to the prophets in time of the kings and during the exile.  Upon the return of the Hebrews to Israel it was passed along by the scribes, which started the schools of the Pharisees in order to preserve the law and keep it from being broken so it would never be lost.  After the destruction of the second temple the Rabbis began writing down the oral in the Mishnah.  For more on this you can read my post entitled Judges, Pharisees and Rabbinut.

The point is, I think something happened while passing along the oral law. Something seems to have changed, just like the message changes in whisper down the lane. 

Part I - History

We know sin existed in the world even before Moses, from the time of Adam and Eve. In Genesis chapter 2 we read the first command God gave Adam.  Verses 16 to 17 (NIV) read; “And the Lord God commanded man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.’”  In Genesis 3 we read the story of the fall of man, how Adam and Eve were deceived by the serpent and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  We read in Genesis 3:22 (NIV) that God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.”

In Genesis chapter 4 we read how Cain kills Abel out of jealousy. He knows this is wrong even though Moses had not yet been given the commandments.  In Genesis chapter 6 we read the earth was corrupt and God decides to destroy the people with a flood, sparing only Noah and his family, for “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God (from Genesis 6:9 NIV).” We know that God is fair and just, and would not destroy most of the people on earth if He didn’t feel they should know the difference between right and wrong.

In Genesis Chapter 7:2 (NIV), there is something I find very interesting.  God tells Noah; “Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate.”  Even before the law of Moses, God had distinguished between clean and unclean animals and Noah knew the difference.  God did not need to specify.

If we read the length of time the early people in the bible lived as literal, meaning, Adam actually lived 930 years, and Methuselah actually lived to be 969 (the longest human life recorded in the bible), then Adam would have died 126 years before Noah was born and Adam’s son Seth would have died 14 years before Noah was born.  However, many of Adam’s early descendants would have known both Adam and Noah, such as Adam’s grandson Enosh, Adam’s great-grandson Kenan, Kenan’s son Mahalalel and grandson Jared, and of course Noah’s grandfather Methuselah, who likely died in the flood, and even Noah’s own father Lamech all knew both Adam and Noah.  Although Noah missed out on the first 1,056 years of the world, he knew people who had at least second hand knowledge. Not exactly whisper down the lane, but still the world had been corrupted.  

It seems Noah had at least an occasional conversation with the Creator Himself, although these conversations may have been limited to the flood, the ark and other various preparations involving the destruction of most of the world.  But let’s say in these conversations, God confirmed with Noah what He expected of a righteous man. Noah lived 350 years after the flood and was alive when Abraham was born, but died before Isaac was born.  Shem who lived to be 500, would have lived just long enough to live through God’s judgement on Sodom and Gomorrah, less than 400 years after the flood, although Noah and Shem presumably lived far to the East of Canaan.  

The Israelites lived in Goshen 430 years before the Exodus and it seems that they had heard stories about the God of their forefathers, but their faith was intermittent.  As we saw from Sodom and Gomorrah, 400 years is more than enough time to forget.  400 seconds is usually enough time to forget something in my household.  Within a few months of the plagues in Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea, with enough food and water to satisfy 600,000 men and their families, the Israelites still turned to a golden calf.  Perhaps this is why God decided to have Moses write the law down.    

We are told in 1 Kings 6:1, that Solomon began to build the First Temple 480 years after the Israelites came out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign.  According to 2 Samuel 5:4 and 1 Chronicles 29:27, David was 30 years old when he became king and was king over Israel for 40 years.  So David began his reign as king about 436 years after the Israelites came out of Egypt.

After Solomon's reign, which totaled 40 years, the kingdom split into two, Israel and Judah.  Israel had 19 kings after Solomon, and lasted almost 250 years before Hoshea, the last king of Israel, was defeated by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria.  We are told in 2 Kings 17:7-23 that Israel was exiled because of they had turned from the Lord.  

Judah had 19 kings and one queen after Solomon, and lasted close to 400 years before Zedekiah, last king of Judah, was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians. In 2 Chronicles 36:11-19 we read how the Lord’s wrath was aroused against his people because they had become unfaithful to him and followed the detestable practices of the nations.

Part 2 - Justice, Mercy and Faithfulness

“Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? You also say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gift on the altar is bound by that oath.’

"You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? Therefore, anyone who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And anyone who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. And anyone who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.”

- Matthew 23:16-26

When the Israelites returned to Jerusalem 70 years after they were defeated by Nebuchadnezzar, there became a new emphasis in Judaism on following the law of Moses, so that the Lord would not forsake his people again. Scribes, whose school of thought would develop into the Pharisees, began to study the law and the prophets.  But for all their study, they must have missed something, because 590 years after they began constructing the Second Temple, it was destroyed again. Either that, or something happened along the way in passing down the "oral law" just as the message is inevitably changed while playing whisper down the lane. In reading the Matthew 23, I get the sense that Yeshua was disgusted by the way the Pharisees perverted the law and focused on the things that were unimportant, while neglecting the things that were important. As Yeshua put it, cleaning the outside of the cup while neglecting what was on the inside.

Going back to David, we read in 1 Samuel 18 how King Saul becomes jealous of David and he begins to plot to kill him.  In 1 Samuel 20, during the New Moon Festival, Saul is looking for David so that Saul can kill David, but David’s seat is empty. In verse 26 we read that Saul said nothing that day, for he thought, “Something must have happened to David to make him ceremonially unclean—surely, he is unclean.”  

In contrast, we read in Acts 10 how Cornelius sends men for Peter, and how God gives Peter a vision before the men arrive.  Peter goes to Cornelius’ house and finds a large gathering of people there. In verses 28-29, Peter says to them, “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection.”

The Pharisees taught that being unclean was forbidden. You could not do anything that would make you unclean. Yet, when Saul sees that David hasn’t shown up for the New Moon festival, Saul thinks David has done something to make himself unclean, then thinks no more of it. Saul is jealous of David, who he sees as his political rival. Right now, America is in the middle of a presidential election. Do you think if either one of the candidates thought the other might have done something that was seen as “forbidden” in our society, that they would just casually dismiss it and think nothing of it. Yet, this is what Saul does.

In 2 Chronicles chapters 29 to 32 we read about the reign of King Hezekiah.  2 Chronicles 29:2 reads; “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done.” Hezekiah ruled after King Ahaz, who had shut the doors of the temple and set up altars on every street corner.  In the first month of Hezekiah’s reign, he reopened the Temple doors, told the priests to consecrate themselves and remove the defilement from the sanctuary. He presented sin offerings to atone for all Israel.

In Chapter 30 Hezekiah invited all of Israel to the temple in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover to the Lord God of Israel.  We are told a very large crowd of people gathered in Jerusalem and that there was great joy, for there had not been anything like it since the days of Solomon. In 2 Chronicles 30:18-20 we read; “Although most of the many people who came from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun had not purified themselves, yet they ate the Passover, contrary to what was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, ‘May the Lord, who is good, pardon everyone who sets their heart on seeking God—the Lord, the God of their ancestors—even if they are not clean according to the rules of the sanctuary.” And the Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people.’

Hezekiah was king. He could have forced these people who were unclean to purify themselves or to leave, yet he understood what was more important, that these people who had not known the ways of the Lord had set their hearts on seeking God. And God healed them.

That’s the law that David loved. A law that looks at a man's heart before it looks at his appearance. A law with justice, mercy and faithfulness.