What does 2 Samuel 5:8 mean?

This verse causes a great deal of confusion about how David and God feel about people who are disabled. In context, however, it's David's response to taunts. The people of Jebus claimed that even their blind and lame could repel an attack from David (2 Samuel 5:6). They know their city is naturally well-defended, but David knows it has a weakness: the Gihon Spring that provides the city with water. David lives in Hebron, in the middle of Judah, but he wants the city of Jebus for his capital. He presents a challenge to his men, and Joab leads the attack (1 Chronicles 11:6).

David didn't hate blind and lame people, nor did he bar them from the city. Scholars have debated the precise meaning of the phrase, "The blind and the lame shall not come into the house." This might have been a saying that people used to express anger with their adversaries. Beyond that, the discussion involves several questions. First, are the "blind and the lame" Jebusites, or those who are physically sightless and handicapped? Second, does "house" mean David's palace, the tabernacle he sets up (2 Samuel 6:17), the temple (1 Kings 6), or all of Jerusalem?

David's history proves he didn't hate all Jebusites. After he took an unlawful census of the fighting men, God's punishing plague stopped at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite on what would become the temple Mount. David bought Araunah's threshing floor and oxen for a fair price (2 Samuel 24:18–25). But Jebusites were Canaanites, and the Israelites were not to intermarry with them (Ezra 9:1).

The lame were certainly not subject to David's hate. When he found Jonathan's lame son Mephibosheth, he practically adopted him, insisting he eat in the palace every day (2 Samuel 9).

Most of the controversy over these words controversy stems from the belief that God would unfairly keep the lame and blind from worshiping Him at the temple. Yet nothing in Scripture says this. Leviticus 21 sets high standards for priests and prohibits men who are blind or limp from serving in that capacity (Leviticus 21:18). Deuteronomy 23:1–4 says that men who are emasculated or of illegitimate birth cannot enter the assembly; these conditions represented the lack of or misuse of God's blessing of fertility. Nor can Ammonites, Moabites, or any of their descendants worship in the temple. But, if that law had been strictly followed, David wouldn't have entered because his great-grandmother was Ruth, the Moabitess (Ruth 4:21–22).

That leaves us to look for explanations in extra-biblical Jewish writings. The Talmud is the written version of the Oral Law: the scribes' interpretation of the details of the Mosaic law that God didn't give. These are not divinely inspired, but they can give insight into how those words were understood by prior generations. The Chagigah is the section on feasts. Talmud Chagigah 2a:1 says:

"All are obligated on the three pilgrim Festivals in the mitzva of appearance, i.e., to appear in the temple as well as to sacrifice an offering, except for a deaf-mute, an imbecile, and a minor; and a tumtum [intersex], and a hermaphrodite, and women, and slaves who are not emancipated; and the lame, and the blind, and the sick, and the old, and one who is unable to ascend to Jerusalem on his own legs."

Verse 2 goes on to explain "child" refers to someone too old to ride on his father's shoulders but too young to be able to climb the temple Mount on his own.

The point isn't that the lame and blind are forbidden to enter temple. Rather, it's that the walk was so steep and rugged that they shouldn't be forced to make the trip. It should also be noted that although the Talmud was the record of the Oral Law used by the Pharisees for hundreds of years, it wasn't written until long after the Romans had destroyed the temple.

Another document is more specific but even less authoritative. One of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 11Q19 45:12–14 says, "No blind man shall enter it [the sanctuary] in all his days and shall not profane the city where I abide, for I, YHWH, abide amongst the children of Israel for ever and ever."

This seems to be the ideal set by the Essenes, not the actual practice. After all, Jesus healed the blind and the lame at the temple, in Jerusalem, although they were probably in the Courtyard of the Gentiles, not the building (Matthew 21:14).

All of this suggests that "the blind and the lame shall not come into the house" was probably just an expression, probably stemming from this very incident. There's nothing in the Bible that prohibits the blind and the lame from entering the temple building.