The kings of Israel and Judah

King David

The united kingdom · Reigned forty years (2 Samuel 5:4 to 5) · Right before God · 2 Samuel; 1 Kings 1 to 2; 1 Chronicles 11 to 29

David, the shepherd of Bethlehem who killed Goliath and was anointed to replace Saul, became the greatest king of Israel and the standard by which every king after him was measured. A man after God's own heart, he united the tribes, took Jerusalem, and received God's promise that his throne would be established for ever. Scripture is honest about his grave sins, yet his repentance and his faith made his name a byword for a heart set on God. His full life is told at /bible-people/david; here the focus is his kingship.

And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever.2 Samuel 7:16 (KJV)

From shepherd to king

David was the youngest son of Jesse of Bethlehem, keeping his father's sheep, when Samuel came and anointed him in secret, for the LORD looks not on the outward appearance but on the heart. He rose to fame killing the Philistine giant Goliath with a sling and a stone in the name of the LORD, and served in Saul's court until the king's jealousy drove him into years of exile as a fugitive and outlaw, sparing Saul's life when he could have taken it.

After Saul and Jonathan died on Gilboa, David was made king over Judah at Hebron, and after long civil war with the house of Saul, all the tribes came and anointed him king over all Israel. He was thirty when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years in all.

Jerusalem, the ark, and the covenant

David captured the stronghold of Zion from the Jebusites and made Jerusalem his capital, the city of David, and brought up the ark of God with dancing and joy so that the presence of the LORD would dwell at the heart of the nation. He longed to build a house for God, but God sent the prophet Nathan with a greater word: David would not build God a house; instead God would build David a house, a dynasty, and establish the throne of his kingdom for ever.

This promise, the Davidic covenant, is the hinge of the whole story: thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever. From this word flows the hope of a coming son of David whose reign would never end, the hope the prophets carried through every disaster that followed.

His sin and his repentance

Scripture does not hide David's great fall. From his rooftop he saw Bathsheba, took her though she was another man's wife, and when she conceived he had her husband Uriah, one of his loyal soldiers, killed in battle to cover it. It was a cold and calculated sin, and the thing that David had done displeased the LORD. God sent Nathan, who told him a parable and then said, Thou art the man.

What set David apart was not sinlessness but the depth of his repentance. He did not excuse himself; he broke before God, and the fifty-first Psalm has become the church's own prayer of confession: Create in me a clean heart, O God. The verdict of Kings is exact and honest: David did that which was right in the eyes of the LORD, and turned not aside from anything he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. The sin was real and its consequences haunted his house, yet his heart returned to God.

A reign of both glory and sorrow

David subdued Israel's enemies, extended its borders, and organized the worship of God, writing many of the psalms that Israel and the church have sung ever since. Yet the latter half of his reign was heavy with the fruit of his own sin: rape and murder among his children, and the rebellion of his beloved son Absalom, which drove David weeping from Jerusalem. He also sinned by numbering the people in pride, and plague fell on the land.

Through it all David remained a man of prayer and worship who kept returning to God. At the end he charged his son Solomon to keep the ways of the LORD, gave lavishly for the temple he would not live to build, and died old and full of days. He was buried in the city of David, and the phrase kept as David his father becomes the measuring line for every king who follows.

Where David points to Christ

David is the great type of the coming King. He was born in Bethlehem, anointed while overlooked, a shepherd who became a king, a man who suffered before he reigned. God's promise that his throne would last for ever was never fulfilled by any mere descendant, for the kings of his line failed one after another, and the dynasty ended in exile.

The New Testament opens by naming Jesus the son of David, and the angel promises that God will give him the throne of his father David, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Jesus is the greater David, born in David's city, the Good Shepherd who is also the King, who did not fall as David fell but was without sin, and who reigns on David's throne for ever. Every earthly king of Israel and Judah, David included, was only a signpost to him.

A note on the record: everything here is drawn from the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. Kings and Chronicles sometimes tell a reign differently, Chronicles often adding a king's repentance or building works, and where they differ this is said plainly rather than smoothed over. The exact lengths and overlaps of the reigns are genuinely complex, because kings often shared the throne with a son for a time, so the totals in Scripture do not always add up in a simple line. The verdict good or evil is the Bible's own assessment, whether a king did right or evil in the sight of the LORD.

Related: David's full life · King Solomon · All the kings of Israel and Judah