1 Chronicles 11 explained: David Becomes King and His Warriors

Israel crowns David (vv. 1-3)

The tribes come to David as family, reminding him he had led them in war under Saul and that God had chosen him to care for them like a shepherd. He makes a binding agreement with their leaders, and they pour oil on his head to mark him as king, though this writer skips the seven years he ruled only his own tribe and the conflict that came before.

Capturing Jerusalem (vv. 4-9)

Jerusalem was a walled hilltop city held by the Jebusites, a local people who mocked David's chances, but he took it, and Joab won the post of army commander by leading the attack. It became David's capital, called the City of David, and the writer credits his growing power to the LORD being with him.

The top warriors (vv. 10-14)

The writer presents these fighters as the men who helped make David king. The parallel list in 2 Samuel says Jashobeam killed 800 rather than 300, a difference likely from copying, and Eleazar's stand in the barley field is told more fully there.

Water from Bethlehem (vv. 15-19)

Hiding near a cave while enemy Philistines held his hometown, David voiced a passing wish for its well water, and three of his men risked death to fetch it. He would not drink something bought with their lives, so he poured it on the ground as an offering to the LORD.

Abishai and Benaiah (vv. 20-25)

The warriors had ranks: an elite group called the Three, and a larger honored group called the Thirty. Abishai and Benaiah were as famous as the Three without officially joining them, and Benaiah, who killed a lion and an Egyptian about seven and a half feet tall, became head of David's personal guard.

The roll of honor (vv. 26-47)

Most names come from the southern tribes, and the last part adds men not in the 2 Samuel list, many from east of the Jordan River, plus foreigners such as an Ammonite and a Moabite. Uriah the Hittite is here too, the loyal soldier David later had killed to cover his affair with Uriah's wife, as told in 2 Samuel 11.

Key verse: 1 Chronicles 11:9

Something to think about

David refused a drink once he saw what it had cost others; when have you realized something given to you came at a real cost to someone, and how did that change how you saw it?