2 Samuel 23:3-4

The oracular brevity of these verses hardly admits of translation, and makes the meaning of them obscure. They may be rendered:

A ruler over men, a righteous one!

a ruler in the fear of God!

and he shall be as the light of morning when the sun riseth;

a morning without clouds;

when from sunshine, from rain, grass springeth from earth.

The second half of 2 Samuel 23:3 draws, with a few strong strokes there are but six words in the original an outline portrait of an ideal king, ruling with perfect justice, controlled and guided by the fear of God. 2 Samuel 23:4 depicts in figurative language the blessings of his reign.

His appearance will be like the life-giving sunshine of a cloudless morning; blessings will follow him as verdure clothes the earth from the united influences of sunshine and rain.

In order to appreciate the force of the latter figure, it must be borne in mind that verdure is not perpetual in Palestine, as with us. There what in June is "a brown, hard-baked, gaping plain, with only here and there the withered stems of thistles and centaureas to tell that life had ever existed there" is clothed in spring after the rains with "a deep solid growth of clovers and grasses." David had been familiar with the yearly transformation of the dry and dusty downs of Beth-lehem into a lovely garden of brilliant flowers; an apt emblem of the gracious influences of the perfect rule of an ideal king upon a hard and desert world. Cp. Isaiah 32:15; Isaiah 35:1-2. See Tristram's Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 454.

This prophecy is the companion and complement of the prophecy in ch. 7 There the promise of an eternal dominion is given to the house of David, finding a partial fulfilment in his descendants, and a complete fulfilment only in Christ: here David himself is taught by inspiration to draw the portrait of a ruler, some features of which were partially realised in Solomon and the better kings of Judah, but which finds it perfect realisation only in Christ.

The features of the portrait are developed and the outlines filled in by subsequent prophets, with ever increasing clearness pointing forward to Him Who was to fulfil and more than fulfil all the anticipations of prophecy.

Thus for the rulercp. Micah 5:2: for the characteristic of righteousnesscp. Psalms 72:1-3 (primarily referring to Solomon); Isaiah 11:1-5: Zechariah 9:9: and especially Jeremiah 23:5; Jeremiah 33:15: for the fear of theLord, cp. Isaiah 11:2. The figure of the fertilising rain is borrowed in Psalms 72:6: cp. Isaiah 44:3-4: that of the light is repeated in Proverbs 4:18: and the closing words of the last prophet, "Unto you shall the Sun of righteousness arise" (Malachi 4:2), combine and re-echo these last words of David.