2 Samuel 7:17-29

CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES—

2 Samuel 7:17. “Words.” … “Vision.” “The words, as the content of God’s revelation to Nathan, are distinguished from the vision as indication of its form and mode.” (Erdmann.) “The vision (a communication received in a waking condition) is constantly distinguished from a revelation in a dream.” (Keil.)

2 Samuel 7:18. “Sat,” rather tarried. “Even if the verb be rendered sat, it is not necessary to suppose that David remained sitting.” (Bib. Commentary.) “Yet sitting under such circumstance would be a respectful attitude, and elsewhere we have no proof in Scripture of a customary attitude in prayer.” (Tr. of Lange’s Commentary.)

2 Samuel 7:19. “Manner of man.” Rather the law of man, i.e., according to Keil, “the law which determines or regulates the conduct of men.” The explanations of this phrase are very varied and numerous. Keil, Grotius, Thenius, De Witte, Hengstenberg, and others, with some differences, understand it to refer to the condescension of Jehovah in treating David as one human creature might treat another, and think the parallel text in Chron., 2 Samuel 17:17 confirms this view. Many expositors give it a direct Messianic reference, and others thus paraphrase it: “It is not thus that men act towards one another, but Thy ways, O Lord, are above men’s ways.” But the objection to this and to the meaning given above is that the word translated law is in these cases rather taken as manner or custom, which it does not signify. Erdmann says “This must be referred to the Divine determination that the everlasting kingdom here spoken of is to be in connection with his house. This is the Divine torah or prescription which is to hold for a weak insignificant man and his seed, for poor human creatures.” Similarly Von Gerlach: “Such a law Thou establishest for a man and his house, viz., that Thou promisest it everlasting duration.” So also Bunsen: “Of so grand a promise hast Thou, O God, thought a man worthy.”

2 Samuel 7:21. “For Thy word’s sake.” “This must contain an allusion to the earlier promises of God, or the Messianic prophecies generally, particularly Genesis 49:10, and Numbers 24:17 sqq. For the fact that David recognised the connection between the promise communicated to him by Nathan and Jacob’s prophecy is evident from 1 Chronicles 28:4, where he refers to his election as king as being the consequence of Judah’s election as ruler.” (Keil.)

2 Samuel 7:23. “Whom God.” Elohim here stands with a plural verb, as often elsewhere when heathen idols are referred to (as Exodus 32:4), because the thought is here intended to be expressed that there is no other nation which the deity worshipped by it redeemed as Jehovah redeemed Israel. (So Keil, Erdmann, etc.) “For you.” If this reading is correct, David’s sudden turning from addressing God to addressing the nation must be attributed to his deep emotion.

2 Samuel 7:29. “Let the house,” etc., rather “Will the house,” i.e., God has said it, and it will be so.”

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—2 Samuel 7:17

DAVID’S THANKSGIVING AND PRAYER

I. The bestowal of new honours should awaken a new sense of humility. The vessel that carries much sail and looks well above the water, should have much ballast below the water-line. Only some heavy weight in the hold will give the needful steadiness to the ship. So the soul that receives from God many and great gifts, and is honoured by Him in a special manner, needs to be well ballasted, lest, being too highly exalted, it make shipwreck on the rock of pride. But if the man be in right relations to God, a sense of his unworthiness and of the increase of responsibility which each new gift and honour brings, will be to him what the iron and stone in the hold are to the full-rigged ship. With David, humility seems ever to have kept pace with the honour bestowed upon him by God. On the day when he was first brought before Saul as the deliverer of his people from the Philistine giant, his words and bearing show that he possessed that spirit of dependence upon God which is only found in those who have formed a lowly, and therefore a right estimate of themselves. We find no trace of any other spirit in him at any period of his history up to this crowning day of his life, when it was revealed to him that he was to be, not only a great and mighty monarch himself, but the ancestor of one who should rule a far more mighty and enduring empire. The manner in which he receives the revelation shows how well fitted he was to carry with a steady hand the overflowing cup of blessing held out to him.

II. Prayer for the fulfilment of Divine promises is a law of the kingdom of God. The promise that God gave to David concerning the Messiah was certain to be fulfilled; no power in the universe could prevent it. But many things are included in the certainty of its fulfilment, and prayer is one—the prayers of all the faithful who lived before the coming of Christ. The very longing of these souls for some more complete manifestation of God than they possessed was in itself a prophecy of it, and the assurance which they received of the coming blessing did by no means cause them to cease to pray for it, but gave them matter for supplication and a motive to continue in it. David here feels no inconsistency in asking that what God has promised shall come to pass, but links his prayer to the Divine word, and makes the promise the basis of the petition: “And now O Lord God, the word that Thou hast spoken concerning Thy servant, and concerning his house, establish it for ever, and do as Thou hast said.” (2 Samuel 7:25.) “And now O Lord God, … Thy words be true, and Thou hast promised this goodness unto Thy servant: Therefore now let it please Thee to bless the house of Thy servant. (2 Samuel 7:28.) So Daniel, when he understood that the time was drawing nigh for the return of the captives from Babylon “set his face unto the Lord God to seek by prayer and supplications, with fastings” (Daniel 9:3), and besought the Lord “to hearken, and, do and defer not” (2 Samuel 7:19) to fulfil the promise which He had made by Jeremiah. And this not because Daniel had any misgivings concerning the faithfulness of Jehovah, but because that very faithfulness furnished him with the ground for his appeal. The same connection between Divine promises and human prayers is taught and practised in the dispensation of the New Testament. We know that the kingdom of God will “come,” and His will one day “be done, as in heaven, so on earth,” yet our Lord commands His disciples to pray constantly for this blessed result. Paul declares in Romans 10:1, that his “heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved, and in the next chapter (2 Samuel 7:26) says that it is the purpose and plan of God when the fulness of the Gentiles be come in, that “all Israel shall be saved.” Promise and petition are indissolubly linked together in the Divine economy, and as Dr. Chalmers remarks, “God’s prophecies tell us what ought to be the subject of our prayers.”

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

2 Samuel 7:17. We see the fidelity of the Lord’s prophet, which all His servants in the ministry should imitate, and that he is not ashamed to recall and recant what formerly he had said to David upon better ground and information from the Lord. Which should teach all men humbly to submit to truth, and quit error and not to stand upon their own credit, in maintaining what once they have professed without retractation.—Guild.

Here there presents itself to us a striking testimony of the reality of immediate divine revelations. David and Nathan united, according to their best knowledge and conscience, in a truly pious and holy work, and suddenly they renounce their cherished purpose, whose execution everything appeared to counsel. Why did they give up the noble intention? Not certainly of their own accord, but rather because God the Lord gave forth his voice regarding it, and interposed immediately his veto. And how should the living personal God, who has given to man the power of speech, not himself be able to speak to the children of men? No argument that can stand the test can be urged to the contrary.—Krummacher.

This revelation is an epoch-making one for David’s inner life. It brought an entirely new element into his life, which as the Psalms show, moved him powerfully … David saw its meaning more and more clearly when he compared the promise with the Messianic idea which had been handed down from the fathers, and finally attained to perfect certainty by the further inner disclosures attached to this fundamental promise, with which he was occupied day and night. Psalms 2 and Psalms 110 afford special proof that such spiritual disclosures were really given to him. The Messianic hope, which had experienced no further development since Genesis 49, now acquired much greater fulness and life. It had a substratum for further development, hallowed by God Himself, in the kingdom already in existence, and especially in David’s personality and fortunes.—Hengstenberg.

The narrative shows that the Messianic sense of the prediction was not only understood, but that it filled David’s heart with the warmest emotions of gratitude and delight. We found this remark partly on the elevated strain of David’s thanksgiving … It is abrupt, impassioned, sublime. It is the language of one who has been raised to the same lofty pedestal as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the illustrious fathers of the nation, and made to occupy the same relation to the Seed of the Woman. Both in spirit and in sentiment there is a close correspondence between this thanksgiving and that of the Virgin Mary. Generally, the announcement was understood by the people as a prediction of the Messiah. Henceforth the Hope of Israel was known as the Son of David.—Blaikie.

2 Samuel 7:25. There are two ways wherein David’s faith works. I. By believing the Divine word. “Thou hast said.” The object and ground of faith is the Divine saying—it is not upon thus saith a man, or thus saith a minister, nay, nor thus saith an angel. Divine faith can stand only upon a Divine testimony. If you have faith, then you have received the word, not as the word of man, but, as it is indeed, the Word of God. II. Faith acts by pleading the accomplishment of the promise. “Do as Thou hast said.” It is the business of faith to put God to His word.

1. To plead upon the mercy that made the promise.
2. Upon the truth that is to make out the promise.
3. Upon the power of the Promiser.
4. Upon the Blood of the Covenant.
5. Upon the love of God to Christ.—Erskine.

2 Samuel 7:29. Blessed conviction! What matters it that our offspring be successful in business, or rise in the world, or form high connections, or accumulate great fortunes, if there be no grace in their hearts, enlightening, refining, and enlarging their moral faculties; and what matters it though the world pity them, and scorn and hate them, if Christ be in them the hope of glory. Blaikie.

In what sense, I shall be asked, did David expect that his sons’ kingdom would be a Divine and spiritual one? In what sense an earthly and magnificent one? I answer—he looked for no earthly magnificence which was not the manifestation of an inward and spiritual dominion; he feared no earthly magnificence, which was a manifestation of it.—Maurice.