The Book of Samuel (one book in the Hebrew) is broken down into two books in the English, 1Samuel and 2Samuel. I have completed the exegesis of 1Samuel, which runs a little over 4000 pages. Therefore, I treat each chapter as a separate document, so the links below will take you to each chapter individually. The idea is, this should be everything that you need to know about this book, including the morphology of the Hebrew. Now, since some of those who read this are not interested in the Hebrew, or do not grasp the significance for including it, I have placed the Hebrew in grey tables which can be easily skipped over. My intention was to provide one place where you could go to get every bit of information that you want on the book of Samuel.

If you have ever read either 1 or 2Samuel critically, you will have a lot of questions: (1) why did God bring in Samuel from outside the priestly line? (2) Why did God allow the Ark of God to fall into disuse during the ministry of Samuel (and kingship of Saul)? (3) God allows a medium to bring Samuel back from the dead; why did God allow that? After all, Samuel, when coming back from the dead, did not tell Saul anything that he did not already know. He certainly did not come back in order to convey new information.

All of these questions, which have never been correctly explained before, will be thoroughly examined and explained, and with these explanations, you will develop a much firmer grasp of Scripture as well as a greater appreciation for what God has done historically. These are not simply historical incidents which some old Bible guy recorded; these are things which are recorded for a reason, and these are things which have actual application to your life as a believer in Jesus Christ. A pastor who examines this exegesis and teaches it from the pulpit will be the first pastor, to the best of my knowledge, to ever teach these things publically.

Now, don’t get all weirded out at this point. I am not going to give you a bunch of brand new doctrines which are different from those already delivered to us; this is, a study of this book is not going to upend your doctrinal foundation, or get you interested in joining some cult of some sort; these questions have doctrinal answers and fit in very well with the essential doctrines that we have learned and have believed in (see the Doctrinal Statement).

I believe that I have solved the problems with the graphics in all documents and the Hebrew characters have always displayed correctly in the PDF documents. From 2Samuel_07 forward, the Hebrew characters will also display correctly in the HTML documents as well (which is made possible by WordPerfect X4):

For some reason, the Return to Chapter Outline link works in these documents, but the Return to Chart and Map Index does not. They both should take you to about the same place in the document.

The problem with the pdf files is, I have trouble getting them to display, although they display fine on my own computer—that is, I cannot simply click on the link and view the file (although I can for other pdf files). I don’t know if these files are too large (they are huge) or if there is some other problem that I cannot figure out. You should be able to right-click the link, choose save as, and put the file on your hard drive and open it there using Adobe Acrobat Reader. That will give you a complete view of the graphics and the Hebrew characters.

Now and again, I have seen that I have made some mistakes in spelling as well as in the morphology (I took the information from Owen, but changed it whenever there was a mistake in his work). If you discover mistakes, then I would want to know what they are so that I could change them and update the documents. I enjoy studying the Word of God, but I so hate to proofread.

As to the computer problems noted above (internal document links that don’t work; acrobat files that you cannot view on the web), quite frankly, I don’t have a clue how to fix them.

The Same problems noted above for 1Samuel are also true of the 2Samuel files. At this point, I have not written the introduction for 2Samuel and I have recently completed only 2Sam. 1–7.

Brief Chapter Synopsis

Note: This is a new section, and I have only included recently completed chapters.

2Samuel 6 (HTML) (PDF) is all about David bringing the Ark of God from where it had been stored for the past 40 or so years into Jerusalem, the newly established capital of Israel. He failed to learn the mechanics of properly moving the Ark, and, as a result, a man died. David stopped right then and there, the Ark was put into a temporary storage, and then, a few weeks later, after studying the Bible, David figured out how to do it right. There was a great celebration in bringing the Ark successfully into Jerusalem.

There are several important topics covered in this study. Why didn’t Samuel restore Tabernacle worship when the Ark was returned? More importantly, why didn’t God cause Samuel move the Ark back to the Tabernacle and restore full Tabernacle worship? Why did David fail in bringing the Ark into Jerusalem the first time? David has sacrifices being offered up every 6 steps; what is that all about? Michal, David’s wife (Saul’s daughter), after the ceremony of the moving of the Ark, was upset—why? Even though 2Sam. 6 deals with a real, historical incident, what do the various symbols of this chapter represent? What are the offerings all about? Why does God the Holy Spirit bother to give us the list of food which David sends home with those attending this ceremony?

2Samuel 7 (HTML) (PDF) begins with David progressing logically to the idea that, since he lives in a palace, it does not seem right that the Ark of God reside in a tent, so David proposes that he build a permanent structure for God (a Temple). He asks the prophet Nathan what he thinks, and Nathan tells him, “That sounds like a great idea; go ahead and do it.” Then God appears to Nathan and tells him that David will not do this, but that his son would. Then God gives the Davidic Covenant, which is a marvelous set of promises made by God to David, which promises also make reference to the Messiah to come, Who would be in David’s line.

The first question which ought to pop into your head is, since David is said to be a man after God’s own heart, why doesn’t God allow David to build a Temple? There are some verses and portions of verses which are difficult to interpret. The phrase the law [custom] of Adam [man] is one of these phrases.

For those of you who have a weak background when it comes to the history of Israel, I have written a brief history of Israel, from Abraham to the dispersion of Judah, the southern kingdom, to the return of the Jews to the land, and all the way to the Roman attack and destruction of Jerusalem in 70 a.d. In this chapter of Samuel, I have gone into great detail about the Divine Dynasphere, the power realm within which the believer operates. This is how our lives today find their proper pattern in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. The term and concepts were originally developed by R. B. Thieme Jr. and presented in greater detail in Christian Integrity, a book available from Berachah Church.

Other important topics covered in this study: God’s exclusive nature and being—the Scripture testifies to the exclusiveness of the God of Israel. God’s redemption of Israel typifies God’s redemption of mankind. What we learn from obvious textual errors. God’s relationship with Israel is eternal (including all of God’s covenants with Israel). Links to God’s many promises on the internet. The name Jehovah is applied to all members of the Trinity.