2 Samuel 6: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

David gathers thirty thousand chosen men to move the ark of God to his city. On the way, Uzzah takes hold of the ark when the oxen stumble, and God strikes him dead, so David leaves the ark at the house of Obed-edom for three months. When David hears that Obed-edom has been blessed, he brings the ark up to the City of David with sacrifices, dancing, and shouting, and he feeds and blesses the whole crowd. His wife Michal scorns him for how he danced, David answers her, and the chapter ends by saying she had no children for the rest of her life.

Claim by Claim

1. 6:1
   • David again gathered the chosen men of Israel.
   • The men gathered numbered thirty thousand.
2. 6:2
   • David arose and went, together with all the people who were with him.
   • They set out from Baale of Judah.
   • Their purpose was to bring up the ark of God from there.
   • The ark is called by the name of the LORD of hosts.
   • The LORD of hosts is enthroned upon the cherubim.
3. 6:3
   • They set the ark of God on a new cart.
   • They carried it from the house of Abinadab.
   • Abinadab's house was on the hill, or in the place called Gibeah; the text does not settle which.
   • Uzzah and Ahio were sons of Abinadab.
   • Uzzah and Ahio drove the new cart.
4. 6:4
   • They carried the ark out of the house of Abinadab on the hill.
   • They went along with the ark of God.
   • Ahio walked in front of the ark.
5. 6:5
   • David and all the house of Israel celebrated before the LORD.
   • They did so with instruments of cypress wood.
   • They played lyres.
   • They played harps.
   • They played tambourines.
   • They played rattles or sistrums.
   • They played cymbals.
6. 6:6
   • They came to the threshing floor of Nacon.
   • Uzzah reached out toward the ark of God.
   • Uzzah took hold of the ark.
   • He did so because the oxen let it slip, or stumbled.
7. 6:7
   • The LORD's anger burned against Uzzah.
   • God struck Uzzah down there.
   • God struck him for his error or irreverent act.
   • Uzzah died there beside the ark of God.
8. 6:8
   • David was angry, or grieved, at what happened.
   • The reason was that the LORD had broken out in a breach against Uzzah.
   • David named that place Perez-uzzah.
   • That name has remained on the place to this day.
9. 6:9
   • David was afraid of the LORD that day.
   • David asked how the ark of the LORD could come to him.
10. 6:10
    • David was unwilling to move the ark of the LORD to himself into the city of David.
    • David turned the ark aside to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite.
11. 6:11
    • The ark of the LORD remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite.
    • It remained there three months.
    • The LORD blessed Obed-edom.
    • The LORD blessed all of Obed-edom's household.
12. 6:12
    • King David was told a report.
    • The report was that the LORD had blessed the house of Obed-edom and everything belonging to him.
    • The report said this blessing was because of the ark of God.
    • David went and brought the ark of God up from the house of Obed-edom.
    • He brought it to the city of David.
    • He brought it up with rejoicing.
13. 6:13
    • Those who carried the ark of the LORD advanced six paces.
    • He then sacrificed an ox and a fattened animal.
14. 6:14
    • David danced before the LORD with all his strength.
    • David was girded with a linen ephod.
15. 6:15
    • David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD.
    • They brought it up with shouting.
    • They brought it up with the sound of the ram's horn.
16. 6:16
    • The ark of the LORD was entering the city of David.
    • Michal the daughter of Saul looked down through a window.
    • She saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD.
    • She despised him in her heart.
17. 6:17
    • They brought in the ark of the LORD.
    • They set it in its place inside the tent.
    • David had pitched that tent for the ark.
    • David offered burnt offerings before the LORD.
    • David offered peace offerings.
18. 6:18
    • David finished offering the burnt offering and the peace offerings.
    • David blessed the people.
    • He blessed them in the name of the LORD of hosts.
19. 6:19
    • He distributed food to all the people, the whole multitude of Israel.
    • The distribution included both men and women.
    • Each person received one loaf of bread.
    • Each person received one portion, either of meat or a date cake; the word is uncertain.
    • Each person received one raisin cake.
    • All the people went away, each to his own house.
20. 6:20
    • David returned to bless his own household.
    • Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David.
    • Michal said the king of Israel had covered himself with honor today.
    • She said he uncovered himself today in the sight of the maidservants of his servants.
    • She said he did so as one of the empty or worthless men shamelessly uncovers himself.
21. 6:21
    • David spoke to Michal.
    • David said it was before the LORD that he did this.
    • David said the LORD chose him over Michal's father.
    • David said the LORD chose him over all of Saul's house.
    • David said the LORD appointed him ruler over the people of the LORD, over Israel.
    • David said he would celebrate before the LORD.
22. 6:22
    • David said he would make himself yet more lightly esteemed than this.
    • David said he would be lowly in his own eyes.
    • David said that by the maidservants Michal spoke of, he would be held in honor.
23. 6:23
    • Michal the daughter of Saul had no child.
    • She had none until the day of her death.
    • Her childlessness is presented as following from this exchange.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

6:1

"Chosen men" translates a Hebrew military term for picked troops. The number is thirty thousand as the text stands; the Hebrew word for "thousand" (elef) can also mean a clan-sized military unit, so some readers understand it as thirty contingents.

6:2

The ark of God was a portable chest of acacia wood plated with gold, roughly four feet long, fitted with rings and carrying poles, holding the stone tablets of the covenant. It was the most sacred object Israel owned and was treated as the spot where the LORD's presence rested among the people. The Philistines had captured it in battle a generation earlier and sent it back; since then it had sat in a private house, out of use, for about twenty years. Baale of Judah is another name for Kiriath-jearim, a town about nine miles west of Jerusalem. "LORD" printed in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God (the four Hebrew letters YHWH), which readers of the Hebrew did not pronounce aloud. The cherubim were not babies with wings but large winged composite creatures; two of them, worked in gold, faced each other on the lid of the ark, and the space between them was pictured as an empty throne.

6:3

The Hebrew has a pun that cannot be carried over: gib'ah means both "hill" and the place-name Gibeah, so the phrase can be read "which was on the hill" or "which was in Gibeah." A cart was how the Philistines had shipped the ark back years before; Israel's own instructions were that Levites carry it by the poles on their shoulders, which is what happens later in this chapter at verse 13.

6:5

"Played" here means made music and celebrated, not played a game. Of the King James instrument names, a "psaltery" is a stringed instrument something like a lyre, a "timbrel" is a hand drum or tambourine, and the "cornet" is not a horn but a sistrum, a metal rattle shaken to keep rhythm.

6:6

A threshing floor was a flat, hard, open patch of rock or beaten earth, usually on high ground where the wind could catch the chaff, where farmers drove oxen over cut grain to separate it. It was the one wide, level, public space near most villages, so processions and gatherings often happened there.

6:7

The Hebrew word behind "his error" occurs nowhere else and its exact sense is uncertain; suggestions range from "irreverence" to "rashness" to a scribal slip for a word meaning "because he reached out." The text states the death without explaining further.

6:8

Perez-uzzah means "the bursting out against Uzzah." The name repeats the same Hebrew verb used earlier in the verse for the LORD "breaking out", a play on words the English cannot show. "Still its name today" is the narrator speaking to his own readers, centuries before ours.

6:10

The City of David was the narrow fortified ridge David had recently captured from the Jebusites, at that point the whole of Jerusalem, and much smaller than the later city. Obed-edom is called a Gittite, meaning a man from Gath, one of the five main Philistine cities; his name, however, is Hebrew.

6:11

To bless someone means to give them good things. Obed-edom's family did well while the ark was there.

6:13

Here the ark is carried by men rather than hauled on a cart. Sacrificing after only six steps means the offering came at the very start of the procession, not at the end of the journey.

6:14

The linen ephod was the plain working garment of a priest, not royal dress, and it was short. David is dressed as a worshiper rather than as a king, which is the background to Michal's complaint in verse 20.

6:15

The instrument is the shofar, a curved ram's horn that produces a few loud blasts rather than tunes. It was used for signals, alarms and public announcements, not for melody.

6:16

Michal was Saul's younger daughter and David's first wife. Saul had given her to David, then taken her back and married her to another man while David was a fugitive; David had recently demanded her return. Her being named "Saul's daughter" rather than "David's wife" throughout this scene is deliberate on the narrator's part.

6:17

This was a tent David had set up in Jerusalem, not the older tabernacle, which was elsewhere. A burnt offering was an animal burned up entirely, nothing kept back. A peace offering (also called a fellowship offering) was different: only part went on the altar, and the rest was cooked and eaten by the worshipers as a shared meal, which is where the food handed out in verse 19 comes from.

6:18

Pronouncing a blessing over the assembly was a formal public act, normally performed by a priest. David does it himself, as he also wears the priestly ephod.

6:19

The Hebrew names three items, and two of them are uncertain. The first is clearly a loaf or ring of bread. The second is a word that may mean a portion of meat or a pressed cake of dates. The third, ashishah, is a cake of pressed raisins; the King James translators guessed "a flagon of wine." This is the shared meal from the peace offerings.

6:20

Michal's opening line is sarcasm: "how honored" or "how distinguished" the king made himself. "Uncovered himself" points at the short priestly ephod he was dancing in. The word rendered "worthless man" means empty or of no substance; it carries a strong charge of vulgarity.

6:21

"Play" again means celebrate with music and dancing. "Chose me before thy father" does not mean earlier in time; "before" here means in preference to, so David is telling Saul's daughter that he was picked over her father and her whole family.

6:22

"Humble myself" translates a Hebrew verb meaning to make oneself light, of little weight or account, the opposite of the word for honor or glory that Michal used sarcastically. The Hebrew reads "low in my own eyes"; the ancient Greek and some Hebrew manuscripts read "in your eyes."

6:23

The text states the fact and does not say why. In this culture childlessness was a grave misfortune for a woman, and for the story it means no child of Saul's line would ever inherit David's throne.