Coming Up Sunday, August 3

Sunday we will see David firmly established as king of all Israel, officially succeeding Saul. The account in 2 Samuel 5-6 suggests a busy early period of David's reign, filled with battles against the pesky Philistines and a persistent group (evidently, because they haven't appeared in the story since Genesis), the Jebusites.

During the course of five years, David stabilizes the kingdom against the Philistine threat and tries to find some national symbolism to unify the underlying conflicts between the northern and southern tribes. He finds it in his campaign against the well entrenched stronghold of the Jebusites. After defeating them, he claims the city as his own, renaming it Jerusalem, and making it the capital of Israel.

David's centrality in the history of Judaism owes no small part to his role in establishing the holy city, the first City of David (not to be confused with Bethlehem) and the first City of God. David further symbolizes the importance of the city by reclaiming the Ark of the Covenant, which has laid somewhat forgotten and neglected in the hill country, and bringing it to an altar in Jerusalem. With this, David takes an older unifying symbol of the Israelites and uses it to establish a new unifying symbol, the capital city.

Jerusalem (and eventually the Temple) becomes the central unifying aspiration of Judaism, the theme in all of Jewish hopes and striving through the centuries, even to the present day. Its up and down history, from capital of a self-sustaining people, through captures by foreign armies, vassal kings, near obliteration, to the Zionist movement of the 19th and 20th centuries, is as central to the Jewish experience as their preservation of Torah.

But it is not only a potent theme for Jews; it has been appropriated as a hope for Christians too, beginning with the hopes of God establishing a "new Jerusalem" at the end of days (as described in the book of Revelation). Some have even hoped for a this-worldly new Jerusalem, perhaps most famously by William Blake, in "The New Jerusalem." This poem was popularized during World War I as a patriotic hymn (music by Hubert Parry), and is considered the unofficial anthem of England.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

The nationalism of Blake's words captures the essence of David's goals in establishing Jerusalem as his capital city. But this was a major shift in the history of the Hebrews, solidifying their transition from nomads to people with an established country, and of their religion from agriculturally-centered to urban-centered. We will touch on some of these themes Sunday.