The united kingdom

Given to the tabernacle as a small boy after his mother's prayer, and called by name in the night. He judged Israel, anointed both Saul and David, and warned the nation plainly what a king would cost them before giving them one anyway.

A woman who prayed for a son so intensely that the priest assumed she was drunk, then gave the child back to God's service when he was weaned. Her song of reversal, where the proud are brought down and the hungry filled, is closely echoed centuries later in Mary's Magnificat.

Saul's son and heir, and David's closest friend, who protected the man who would take his own throne. He died with his father and brothers at Gilboa, and David's lament for him is one of the great elegies in Scripture.

The giant of Gath who challenged Israel's army for forty days and was killed by a shepherd with a sling. The text is careful about his armor and his reach, which is what makes the choice of weapon the point.

A woman of quick judgment who rode out with provisions to stop David from slaughtering her husband's household over an insult, and talked him down. When her husband Nabal died, David married her.

The woman David saw from his roof, in an episode the text presents as the king's sin rather than hers, and whose husband Uriah he had killed to cover it. She later secured Solomon's succession, and Matthew lists her in the genealogy of Jesus.

The prophet who brought David both the covenant promise of an everlasting throne and, later, the parable of the poor man's lamb that trapped the king into condemning himself.

Called David's seer, he advised him during the years on the run and later brought him the three-fold choice of judgment after the census.

He met Jeroboam on the road, tore a new cloak into twelve pieces, and gave him ten, announcing the division of the kingdom before it happened. Years later, blind and old, he delivered the verdict on the dynasty he had helped begin.

Saul's cousin and general, who kept the house of Saul on a throne for years after Gilboa, then quarreled with his puppet king and offered to hand the kingdom to David. Joab murdered him at the gate of Hebron, and David made a public point of grieving.

Ruthless, effective, and impossible to control. He murdered rivals, killed Absalom against direct orders, and spoke to David more bluntly than anyone else dared, including telling him he was destroying his own army with his grief. David never managed to be rid of him and left the problem to Solomon.

Handsome, aggrieved, and patient. After his sister Tamar was raped by their half-brother he waited two years and had the man killed, then spent four more years standing at the gate telling everyone their case would win if only he were judge. His revolt drove his father out of Jerusalem, and it ended with his hair caught in an oak and Joab's spears.

Dropped by his nurse as a child when the news came from Gilboa, and lame in both feet after. David hunted for anyone left of Saul's house in order to show kindness, and gave him his grandfather's land and a permanent place at the king's table.

One of David's elite soldiers, a foreigner by descent, who would not sleep in his own house while the army was in the field. His refusal, the most honorable act in the chapter, is what forced David to have him killed, and he carried the letter that arranged it.

After seven of Saul's descendants were executed and left exposed, she spread sackcloth on a rock and stayed from harvest until the rains, driving off birds by day and animals by night. When David heard, he gathered the bones and buried them properly.

The genealogy that fills 1 Chronicles 2 to 4, running from Judah through Perez and Hezron to David and beyond the exile. It is the longest single family record in Scripture, and it is placed first because the Chronicler is writing to a community that needed to know the royal line survived.

The priestly and Levitical registers of 1 Chronicles 6 and 23 to 26: the line of Aaron down to the exile, and the twenty-four divisions David organized for service in the sanctuary, assigned by lot.

The Thirty and the Three, listed at the close of 2 Samuel and again in 1 Chronicles: the men who fought with David through the wilderness years and afterward. Most appear only here, identified by their home town, which is why the lists are thick with words like Netophathite and Hushathite.

The stewards, counselors, recorders, bodyguards, and hangers-on who fill the books of Samuel and Kings. Barzillai the Gileadite fed David's army in exile and then refused to come to the palace because at eighty he could no longer taste what he ate.

The priest who raised Samuel, and who failed to restrain his own sons when they stole from the offerings and abused the women serving at the entrance. Warned that his house would fall, he answers only that the LORD should do what seems good.

A man of the hill country of Ephraim with two wives, Hannah and Peninnah, who went up yearly to Shiloh to worship. His question to his grieving wife, am I not better to you than ten sons, is either tender or tone-deaf depending on how you read it.

Saul's father, of Benjamin, whose lost donkeys sent his son on the errand that ended with Samuel anointing him king. Abner, Saul's cousin and army commander, held the northern kingdom together for two years after Saul's death before being murdered by Joab.

The king David fled to twice while running from Saul. The first time David escaped by feigning madness, scratching at the doors and letting saliva run into his beard. The second time Achish gave him Ziklag and came to trust him completely, while David raided elsewhere and lied about where he had been.

A Bethlehemite of Judah, Boaz's grandson, whose eight sons were paraded before Samuel until the youngest was fetched from the sheep. His eldest, Eliab, is the one Samuel assumed was the choice, and who later snaps at David for coming to the battle line.

A rich sheep owner at Carmel who insulted David's men after they had protected his shepherds, and whose wife Abigail intercepted David's raiding party with food and a speech that talked him out of a massacre. Nabal died ten days later.

David's sister, named far more often than her husband, and mother of Joab, Abishai, and Asahel. The three of them are David's hardest soldiers and his recurring problem.

Two of David's older sons, both of whom came to ruin. Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar and was killed two years later by her brother Absalom. Adonijah declared himself king while David was dying, was spared by Solomon, and was executed after asking for David's nurse as a wife.

David's advisor, whose counsel was regarded as if a man had inquired of the word of God, and who went over to Absalom's revolt. When his advice to strike immediately was set aside for worse advice, he went home, set his house in order, and hanged himself.

David's nephew, made commander of Absalom's rebel army and then, after the revolt collapsed, offered Joab's job as a gesture of reconciliation. Joab took his beard as if to kiss him and stabbed him with a sword held in the other hand.

One of David's mighty men, remembered for killing two Moabite champions, striking down a huge Egyptian with the man's own spear, and going down into a pit on a snowy day to kill a lion. Commanded the royal bodyguard, stayed loyal at Solomon's accession, and replaced Joab as commander of the army.

David's two priests. Abiathar had escaped the massacre at Nob and joined David in the wilderness, carrying the ephod. Zadok's line came from Eleazar. At Solomon's accession Abiathar backed Adonijah and Zadok backed Solomon, and Abiathar was removed.

The priest who gave David the consecrated bread and Goliath's sword, not knowing he was a fugitive. Doeg the Edomite reported it, and Saul had eighty-five priests killed along with the whole town. Only Abiathar escaped.

The men David appointed to lead music before the ark, and the guilds descended from them who ran worship in the temple for centuries. Twelve psalms carry Asaph's name, and others carry Heman's and Ethan's.

The Phoenician king who supplied David and then Solomon with cedar, cypress, and skilled craftsmen for the palace and the temple, floating the timber down the coast in rafts. Paid in wheat and oil, and later given twenty Galilean towns he was not impressed by.

A Benjamite of Saul's house who walked along the ridge cursing David and throwing stones as he fled from Absalom. Abishai offered to remove his head; David said to let him curse, since the LORD might have told him to.

Named almost every time his son is, in the recurring formula about the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. The phrase appears more than twenty times and functions as the standard by which the northern kings are measured.

A name borne by several foreign rulers, mostly Aramean kings of Damascus. Ben-hadad besieged Samaria; Hazael, whom Elisha wept over on foreseeing what he would do, seized the throne by smothering his master with a wet cloth and became Israel's most destructive enemy.

A name borne by both men and women across the Old Testament. The best known is the queen mother, Abijah's wife and Asa's grandmother, whom Asa removed from her position because she had made an obscene image for Asherah. Another Maacah was the mother of Absalom, a foreign princess.