CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES—
2 Samuel 7:11. “And as since,” etc. The first clause of this verse should be connected with 2 Samuel 7:10, thus, neither shall the children of wickedness afflict them any more, as before and as since, or from the day, etc.
2 Samuel 7:8-11. “The connection between these verses and 2 Samuel 7:5-7 is as follows: Thou shalt not build a house for Me, but I, who have from the very beginning glorified myself in thee and my people, will build a house for thee.… The kingdom of God in Israel first acquired its rest and consolation through the efforts of David … and the conquest of Zion and the elevation of this fortress into the palace of the king formed the commencement of the establishment of the kingdom of God. But this commencement received its first pledge of perpetuity from the Divine assurance that the throne of David should be established for all future time. And this the Lord was about to accomplish. He would build David a house, and then his seed should build the house of the Lord. No definite reason is assigned why David himself was not to build the temple; we learn this first from 1 Chronicles 22:8.… But this did not involve David in any blame … but inasmuch as these wars were necessary and inevitable, they were practical proofs that David’s kingdom and government were not yet established, and therefore that the time for the building of the temple had not yet come.” (Keil.)
2 Samuel 7:12. “Thy seed.” “Not the whole posterity, as is clear from the explanatory words in 1 Chronicles 17:11, nor merely a single individual, but a selection from the posterity.” (Erdmann.)
2 Samuel 7:14. “A father,” etc. This denotes in the first place the most cordial mutual love, which attests its enduring character by fidelity, and demonstrates its existence towards the Lord by active obedience. But besides this ethical relation of David’s seed to God we must, from the connection, note—first, the origin, or descent of the son from the father. The seed of David, entrusted with everlasting kingly dignity, has, as such, his origin in the will of God—owes his origin to the Divine choice and call (comp. Psalms 2:7; Psalms 89:27-28). Secondly, in the designations father and son is denoted community of possession. The seed as son receives dominion from the father as heir, and as this dominion is an everlasting one he will, as son and heir, reign for ever in the possession of the kingdom. The father’s kingdom is an unlimited one, embracing the whole world; so in the idea of sonship there lies, along with everlastingness, the idea of all-embracing-world-dominion.” (Erdmann.)
2 Samuel 7:14. “With the rod of men,” etc. Such punishments as are inflicted on all men when they sin. Grace is not to release David and the Davidic line from this universal human lot, is not to be for them a charter to sin,” (Hengstenberg.)
2 Samuel 7:15. “As I took it from Saul,” etc. “The contrast is between the punishment of sin in individuals and the favour that remains permanently with the family, whereby the Divine promise becomes an unconditional one.” (Hengstenberg.)
2 Samuel 7:16. “For ever.” It is obvious that this promise related primarily to Solomon, and had a certain fulfilment in him and in his reign.… At the same time, the substance of the promise is not fully exhausted in him. The threefold repetition of the expression “for ever,” the establishment of the kingdom and throne of David for ever, points incontrovertibly beyond the time of Solomon, and to the eternal continuance of the seed of David.… We must not reduce the idea of eternity to the popular notion of a long incalculable period, but must take it in an absolute sense as it is evidently understood in Psalms 89:30. No earthly kingdom, and no posterity of any single man, has eternal duration like the heaven and the earth; but the different families of men become extinct as the different earthly kingdoms perish. The posterity of David, therefore, could only last for ever by running out in a person who lives for ever; i.e., by culminating in the Messiah.… The promise consequently refers to the posterity of David, commencing with Solomon and closing with Christ; so that by the seed we are not to understand Solomon alone, with the kings who succeeded him, nor Christ alone to the exclusion of the earthly kings of David’s family; nor is the allusion to Solomon and Christ to be regarded as a double allusion to two different objects.” (Keil.)
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 2 Samuel 7:12-16
THE MESSIANIC PROMISE TO DAVID
This promise—
I. Reveals the special purpose of God in the election of David. As the king now sits in his palace of cedar, God takes him back to the days when as a youth he followed the sheep. During all the years that had intervened, and in all the manifold experiences through which he had passed, he had been the object of special Divine care and guidance. His life had been such that, however he might have sometimes yielded to despair in the past, he must have now felt deeply conscious, upon looking back, that he had been highly favoured above all the men of his nation. Doubtless he was more gifted than most—perhaps than any,—but the gifts that fitted him for the throne were from the same Divine giver, and only increased his obligation. But he is here reminded that he had not been made thus great for his own sake alone, or chiefly. He was to use all that had been bestowed upon him for the people over whom he had been called to rule, and was to be the founder of a race through whom not only Israel but all the families of the earth were to be blessed. This is always the purpose of God’s electing grace, whether of the individual or the nation. Men receive special favours that they may dispense special blessings, and are intended to be, not like those lakes in which a mighty river is ever emptying itself, and yet from which no stream ever flows, but like the fountain-head of that river which, as fast as it is fed by the mountain snows, sends forth its waters and becomes a channel of blessing to all around. The spirit of many of David’s psalms reveal that he entered fully into the Divine purpose of his election, but the spirit of many, both of his immediate and remote descendants, shows that they utterly failed to discern it.
II. It reveals the progressive nature of the Divine dispensations in relation to man. A dim outline is here given to Nathan by prophetic vision of a kingdom far more glorious than that which David founded. We, who live after the earthly sceptre has departed from Judah, can fill in the details, and recognise in David’s Lord the only Son who could establish his house for ever. In the kingdom of God under the Old Testament, the name of David takes a high place, and among the kings of Israel he holds a deserved pre-eminence, on account of the great national blessings which attended his powerful and beneficent rule. But One who descended from him according to the flesh has, by the majesty of His person, and the excellence of His character, and the transcendent glory of His kingdom, caused the name of David to sink into nothing in comparison. The kingdom of Christ endures because it is founded upon a purely spiritual basis; it knows no limit of time or place because its laws have their origin in the eternal moral necessity of the universe. For its King rules always and everywhere because His throne is in the heart of each of His subjects “He shall judge the poor of the people, He shall save the children of the needy, and break in pieces the oppressor;” and therefore “He shall be feared as long as the sun and moon endure.” “He shall spare the poor and needy” and “redeem their soul from deceit and violence,” and the name of such a King must “endure for ever” and “be continued as long as the sun” (Psalms 62). His name is called “Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins,” and as a necessary consequence, “He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of His kingdom there shall be no end.” (Luke 2:33). David was elected by God to shepherd Israel, and his reign was upon the whole fraught with blessing to his subjects. But the dispensation in which he ministered was, in comparison with that of the New Testament, only as the acorn to the oak, and he could as little conceive of the glory of these latter days as we could picture to ourselves some monarch of the forest, if we had never seen anything more than the tiny seed which enfolds its germ. And God has yet more in reserve for the race for whom the Great Shepherd laid down His life. We as little comprehend what wonders of grace and glory are yet to be unfolded under the reign of Christ, as David comprehended all that was included in the word of the Lord which came to Nathan. We have the King of whom it spake, and who can never be succeeded by another; but we have no conception of the infinite possibilities yet hidden in God in connection with that kingdom which can never be removed but abideth for ever. “Eye hath not” yet “seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
In considering this prophecy we need to bear in mind the peculiar form of the revelations respecting Messiah which God communicated to David. To other prophets, revelations of the Messiah were made objectively—apart from themselves; they were shown Christ and His day afar off; they had no more personal relation to the thing revealed than other believers around them. But when revelations of Messiah were made to David, they were usually connected with something in his own life, history, or experience; they had a shadowy foundation in something subjective or pesonal to himself; that thing enlarged, purified, glorified, constituted the revelation of Christ. This was in keeping with the typical relation which David and his kingdom had to Christ and His kingdom. As this was the character of the revelations made to David respecting Christ, so also was it the character of many of his prophetic songs.… Melting and shading insensibly into each other as the two classes of objects do, it is often extremely difficult to say which of them is meant.—Blaikie.
It is plain that the building of a house of rest for the ark was designed to stand out prominently in the sight of Israel as a great and mighty undertaking—as a work of sufficient magnitude and importance to form the one great enterprise of a king who could give himself to it without distraction or disturbance. Such was obviously the impression which the Divine appointment, regarding the building of a house for the name of God, must have made upon the minds of the people of Israel—the church of that day; and the reason why David was forbidden and Solomon permitted to build that house is still more clearly unfolded to us now that the promises and predictions connected with that work have been and are in the way of being fulfilled.… David was honoured to be an eminent type of the Messiah, inasmuch as, by his trials, his conflicts, and his conquests, he did very significantly prefigure a suffering, but at the same time, a triumphant Saviour. This however, was only one aspect of Christ’s kingly office … there is another view—even the relation in which, as king, He stands to His church.… This view God was also graciously pleased to typify or prefigure in the kingly office as it had been established in Israel; and we cannot fail to perceive the wisdom which provided that this should be done, not in the person of the same king who was employed to represent Christ in His conflict and His victory, but in that of another who should be pre-eminently a peaceful king.—Gordon.
The fulfilment of the great and gracious promise of God to David in Christ the Son of David.
1. In His person, He is not merely David’s seed—seed of the woman—Abraham’s seed, but also God’s Song of Song of Solomon 2. In His office, He is King over the kingdom of God, King of all Kings.
3. In His possession of power, He has an everlasting kingdom, to Him is given all power in heaven and on earth.
4. In His work. He builds for the name of God the Father a house, a spiritual temple in humanity, out of living stones. (Comp. John 2:19.)—Lange’s Commentary.
Why is there this frequent repetition in this promise? (2 Samuel 7:13; 2 Samuel 7:16). Three times is the perpetuity declared. Why is this? It is to meet the difficulties of our faith, arising from the lengthened suspension of the promise, and the apparent improbability of Christ’s everlasting monarchy.—Bickersteth.
We have seen that David was himself a prophecy of Christ. It follows from that, therefore, that the Temple which he so desired to build is a prophecy of the Church. With all its grandeur under Solomon, that stately building was, after all, only a type of that more glorious spiritual fabric which is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone, in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth into an holy temple in the Lord.” Now, in the erection of this living temple we may all take part. When by faith in Jesus Christ we become united to Him, and receive the Holy Spirit into our hearts, we, as it were, build ourselves, or, in another aspect of it, are built by God, as living stones into that glorious edifice which Jehovah through the ages is rearing for His own eternal abode. When, again, by our instrumentality, either directly in the efforts which we put forth at home, or indirectly through the labours of those whom we sustain abroad, we work for the conversion of others, we are engaged as under-builders, on the same spiritual edifice, David would have counted it the highest privilege of his life if he had been permitted to build the Temple on Moriah; and even after the prohibition came by the mouth of Nathan, it was the joy of his latter years to collect materials wherewith Solomon, his son, might raise a house worthy of Jehovah’s worship. Nay, more, in the days of Solomon himself, after the gorgeous structure had been raised, everyone who had done anything, however small, in the way of helping on its erection, was invested with a peculiar honour in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen. As the Psalm expresses it: “A man was famous according as he had lifted axes upon the thick trees.” But a higher privilege, and a more lasting renown, will be the portion of him who assists in the most humble capacity in the uprearing of that Church which is to be “for a habitation of God through the Spirit.” “They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.”—Taylor.
2 Samuel 7:13. Where Jesus reigns in power men must yield obedience of some sort. His kingdom, moreover, is no house of cards or dynasty of days; it is as lasting as the lights of heaven; days and nights will cease before He abdicates His throne. Neither sun nor moon as yet manifest any failure in their radiance, nor are there any signs of decrepitude in the Kingdom of Jesus, it is but in its youth, and is evidently the coming power, the rising sun.… Throughout all generations shall the throne of the Redeemer stand. Humanity shall not wear out the religion of the Incarnate God. No infidelity shall wither it away, nor superstition smother it; it shall rise immortal from what seemed its grave; as the true phœnix, it shall revive from its ashes. As long as there are men on earth Christ shall have a throne among them. Instead of the fathers shall be the children. Each generation shall have a regeneration in its midst, let Pope and devil do what they may. Even at this hour we have the tokens of His eternal power; since He ascended to His throne eighteen hundred years ago, His dominion has not been overturned, though the mightiest of empires have gone like visions of the night. We see on the shores of time the wrecks of the Cæsars, the relics of the Moguls, and the last remnant of the Ottomans. Charlemagne, Maximilian, Napoleon, how they flit like shadows before us! They were and are not; but Jesus for ever is. As for the houses of Hohenzollern, Guelph, or Hapsburg, they have their hour; but the Son of David has all hours and ages as His own.—Spurgeon.
2 Samuel 7:16. The advantages of civil government contrasted with the blessings of the spiritual kingdom of Jesus Christ.
1. The first and primary advantage expected from every well constituted human government is security, and the sense of security.… Whatever may be the imperfections attaching to various modes of government, the worst is preferable to a state of society destitute of public authority and law; in such a state there can exist not only no security, but no tranquillity.… But the utmost that can be enjoyed under any form of civil power is a most imperfect shadow of the safety which Jesus Christ bestows upon the subjects of His spiritual reign …
2. The second benefit expected from human government is liberty. So far as this advantage is consistent with the former, the more largely it is enjoyed the better. Every diminution of our liberty, except such as is necessary to our protection from evils which might otherwise be apprehended, is itself just so much redundant evil.… Restraint that cannot be justified by the production of some greater benefit than could be attained without it, is not imperfection, it is injustice.… But suppose the utmost degree of civil liberty to be enjoyed, what is that in comparison with that real spiritual freedom which Jesus Christ confers?… From the moment the Christian enters into the kingdom of grace and truth, he leaves his bonds behind; invigorated with a Divine strength he purposes and it stands fast; he triumphs over himself; is victorious over the world.… tramples upon the greatest tyrants—the powers of darkness.…
3. The next advantage from a good government is plenty. To secure this is sometimes beyond human power and policy.… In general it may be asserted that human laws should not interfere too much … Everyone should be left at liberty, as far as possible, to choose his own way in pursuing his prosperity.… Under the best systems of government there must remain many cases of want and distress; but in the kingdom of Jesus Christ there exists an infinite plenty for all the wants of the soul.…
4. A tendency to improvement in its social institutions ought to accompany every well-ordered government. The best of those institutions are such as will be at once permanent and progressive by their intrinsic wisdom and excellence—by their adaptation to all the varying circumstances of the nation—by their power of providing for possible emergencies—they will gradually rise from security to convenience, and then exalt convenience into ornament—into just refinement and diffused illumination.… The gospel empire possesses within itself interminable energies and tendencies to benefit its subjects.… All those elysian images of prophecy which paint with so much beauty the latter days of the world, are nothing in their substantial fulfilment but the impress of Jesus Christ on the minds and manners of mankind—the image of Christianity embodied in society, and righteousness dwelling in the new-created universe.…
5. The fifth and last element is stability; this is the crown of all its other advantages. Nothing can be wanting to such a reign but that it should last; and this is what the text emphatically expresses.—Robt. Hall.