Workshop on 2 Samuel 7

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Old Testament studies from 2 Samuel 7.

“After the king was settled in his palace, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, he said to Nathan the prophet, ‘Here I am, living in a palace of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.’ Nathan replied to the king, ‘Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the Lord is with you.’ That night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, saying: ‘Go and tell my servant David, this is what the Lord says: Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” ’ Now then, tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord Almighty says: I took you from the pasture and from ruling the flock to be ruler over my people Israel. I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men of the earth, and I will provide a place for my people Israel, and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed. Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did at the beginning and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people Israel. I will also give you rest from all your enemies. The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you. When your days are over and you rest with your fathers I will raise up your offspring to succeed you who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men, but my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me. Your throne will be established forever.’ Nathan reported to David all the words of this entire revelation. Then King David went in and sat before the Lord, and he said, ‘Who am I, O Sovereign Lord, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? And as if this were not enough in your sight, O Sovereign Lord, you have also spoken about the future of the house of your servant. Is this your usual way of dealing with man, O Sovereign Lord? What more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Sovereign Lord. For the sake of your word and according to your will, you have done this great thing and made it known to your servant. How great you are, O Sovereign Lord. There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears. And who is like your people Israel, the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself, and to make a name for himself, and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people, whom you redeemed from Egypt? You have established your people Israel as your very own forever, and you, O Lord, have become their God. And now, Lord God, keep forever the promise you have made concerning your servant and his house. Do as you promised, so that your name will be great forever. Then men will say, “The Lord Almighty is God over Israel!” and the house of your servant David will be established before you. O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, you have revealed this to your servant, saying, “I will build a house for you.” So your servant has found courage to offer you this prayer. O Sovereign Lord, you are God! Your words are trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant. Now be pleased to bless the house of your servant, that it may continue forever in your sight; for you, O Sovereign Lord, have spoken, and with your blessing the house of your servant will be blessed forever.’ ”

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This is the Word of the Lord.

Now this narrative passage, in some ways a bit long for one sermon because it is so rich, nevertheless hangs together as a cohesive unit and can be preached straightforwardly, too, in one unit, especially if you’re not given to 15-minute sermons. The danger, I think, that we as Christian preachers have in approaching a text like this one is that we want to move so quickly from David to Jesus, which we must do, of course, that the thing is no longer adequately anchored in history.

If there are some preachers, in other words, who are so busy tying things down narrowly to the ancient historical context that they can’t make genuinely text-warranted jumps to the New Testament, in our circles that’s usually not primarily the problem. Our problem might be we’re so eager to make the connections that somehow we skirt the sheer drama of the historical context, and in one sense if you catch that drama well then you’re actually better connecting the historical context with its fulfillment in Christ.

So that’s one of the things, it seems to me, that this sort of historical narrative brings up. It’s obviously not the only one. Another one that it brings up is the nature of typology. Now you don’t want to spend a lot of time in any sermon explaining the nature of typology, but you have to illustrate it correctly enough times that eventually people, by a certain kind of osmosis, understand what typology is and isn’t.

Then maybe there will be some seminars in your church for other Bible teachers and leaders where you go into these sorts of things in fuller detail. In your normal ministry you’re not going to submit a lot of time explaining typology, but when it lurks there in the text it must be rightly explained.

What I want to do in the next few minutes is to give you one possible outline of the chapter as a whole that preserves the drama of the movement. This is not meant to constrain you in your own homiletical approaches, it’s merely one possibility, but it’s one that keeps the drama as a whole while still, nevertheless, anchoring the typology that moves us to King Jesus.

Then along the line, instead of giving you a detailed exposition of each phrase, there obviously isn’t time for that, I want to focus on a number of movements in the text and particular phrases that you need to prepare for adequately to catch the thrust of things. I’m not going to spend time with an introduction and how I would set it up and so on.

Let me plunge right in, so this will be a bit condensed. First, a king with religious initiatives denied (7:1–11a); secondly, a king with an eternal dynasty established (11b–17); and thirdly, a king with enormous privileges humbled (18–29). We’ll come to those again in due course.

1. A king with religious initiatives denied (verses 1–11a)

Chapter 7:1 and following immediately succeeds, both logically and temporally, the end of chapter 6. David rules in Hebron for a while, but now he has taken over Jerusalem. He has unified the tribes, and at last he’s brought the ark to the city.

For the first time, Jerusalem becomes both the royal center and the priestly center. This is enormously important, and ultimately it stands behind Psalm 110 and similar passages that link priestly line and royal line in some anticipatory way. That’s another discussion, but it’s chapter 6 that does all of that.

Then, once these things have taken place and David is established as king and has his own palace, David, a man obviously with more than a few energies, also recognizes, with relative peace all around him, rest from all of his enemies, his own palace glistening in the sunlight and he is extremely comfortable, that somehow something is incongruous with this small, mobile, infested tent.

At this point it’s centuries old, and no doubt they replaced pieces now and then, but it can’t have been a very dramatic sight. It must have looked a bit small, and in the light of neighboring countries with their temples to their gods and so on, at some point he’s beginning to think this is not honoring to God himself.

Moreover, he may have thought he was fulfilling biblical prophecy. Read at your leisure Deuteronomy 12:8–14, where Moses says that the time will come, when the people will be established in the land, that God himself will select a site for regular corporate worship, a site where he will meet with his people … a temple, in fact.

Moreover, Nathan agrees with David’s proposal. He doesn’t even pray about it. David’s hand has been so greatly blessed and the proposal is transparently good. Nathan may have also been thinking of Deuteronomy, chapter 12. What conceivable thing could be ventured against this? It is in line with anticipatory scripture and it is in line with David’s success. It unifies the nation. What conceivable argument could you bring against it?

Then David hears instead, through Nathan, from the Lord, “Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord says.’ ” Now these are not all the reasons why God says no to David. Elsewhere, for example, there is the fact that David is a man of war that’s presented as a further reason, but here there are essentially three reasons why God says no to David, and each is extraordinarily important.

First, in verses 5–7, the thrust of these verses is that God alone takes the initiative in the great turning points in redemptive history, and he will not have it any other way. So, “To which of any of the rulers of these people whom I have commanded to shepherd my people Israel did I ever command, ‘Why have you not built me a house?’ ”

So when you go back to Abraham, for example, it’s not as if you have some interesting religious man, a man of potential leadership out in Ur of the Chaldees thinking to himself, “Here we go again. The race is descending. This time it was Babel; what will it be next time? God, I’ve got a proposal. I think you should begin a whole new humanity. I’d like to volunteer. If you’d like to use me to start a new race, call it whatever you like, Israelites, if you want to, then send me. Wherever you go, I’ll trust you, I’ll obey you, and start a whole new covenant community. From this could spring all kinds of redemptive purposes.” The whole notion is ludicrous.

God intervenes. He intervenes in the choosing of David, not exactly the first choice of Samuel. In all the great turning points in redemptive history God simply will not allow any attention to be taken away from his own free sovereignty. Oh yes, a temple is going to be built here. I mean, it had already been predicted in the time of Moses. Read Deuteronomy. But even in this matter of timing God will not allow the initiative in the great turning points of redemptive history ever even to appear to come from the human side. It is as blunt as that.

Secondly, God makes his kings great, not the other way around. Verses 8 and 9. Now that’s important as well, because the way David had conceived of this whole thing (maybe it wasn’t meant this way in David’s mind), it sounded just a wee bit as if he were almost doing God a favor. “Well, I’m well established, I’d like to do something big for God now, build a cathedral, maybe.”

But as soon as you start thinking in those terms you have entered into pagan religion, and pagan religion, the essence of the enterprise, is tit for tat. I do something for God, and he does something for me, and God simply will not have it. In other words, this is a historical exemplification of a much bigger principle in Scripture that returns again and again.

It is perhaps most powerfully and succinctly articulated in Paul’s address to the Athenians in Acts 17. “God does not need us,” he says. It’s not as if God has any need of us. The Puritans had a word for it which has now fallen out of English language usage and needs to be restored, the God of aseity, from the Latin a se. That is, he is from himself.

We’re used to thinking of this with respect to God’s origins. “He is self-originating,” we say. All others are dependent upon God and are not self-originated. God is self-originating. Aseity is simply the doctrine that says not only is God, as it were, from himself and his own origins, but he is so independent he doesn’t need us. He doesn’t need our contributions. He doesn’t need our finances. He doesn’t need our praise.

He doesn’t go through the week saying, “Boy, I can hardly wait till Sunday. I haven’t been stroked recently. I’m a bit disappointed. I’m having a bad hair day because they used out-of-tune guitars instead of a decent pipe organ this week.” He doesn’t need us. He’s not psychologically or materially or spiritually or emotionally or intellectually dependent upon us. He’s the God of aseity. He just doesn’t need us.

Now, it’s important when you articulate this that you don’t accidentally give the impression that God doesn’t interact with us or that he’s not personal or that he may not interact with both wrath and with love or that he’s not principled. You don’t want to say any of those kinds of things, but all of those kinds of things work out of the framework of all of his attributes. They are part of his love and his freedom and his choice and his sovereignty; not out of some kind of deep need.

He doesn’t need us. In fact, it works precisely the other way, which is also what Paul does in Acts 17. It’s not as if he needed us, but rather, we need him with every breath we breathe, every heartbeat. Everything is dependent upon him. So also here now, in microcosm. You don’t make God great by your good things; God makes you great.

Thirdly, the chapter has begun by talking about David’s rest, or the rest of the people now. That is to say, the nation is relatively at peace. What God seems to say here is the rest that David thinks he has won is not yet all that secure (verses 10 and 11). God is going to give more rest yet, which suggests that David is still going to be a man of war.

He’s going to be involved in far more battles and, in fact, that is what characterizes all of his reign, is it not? This is the setup for the later observance that one of the reasons that God says no is precisely because David is going to be a man of war, and ultimately, only God can give the ultimate rest. Here then, is a king with religious initiatives denied.

2. A king with an eternal dynasty established (verses 11b–17)

Much of this is pretty straightforward, but there are three points that particularly need to be made clear. One is the nature of sonship language. “I will be his father; he will be my son.” The reason that’s important, of course, is because it comes up in many, many, many different texts.

It lies at the heart of Psalm 2, for example. “Today I have become your father. Today I have begotten you.” It is just bound up finely with Son of God language, too. It’s bound up with kingdom and enthronement language. It’s helpful to remember that when we think of son, we are thinking DNA. We are thinking genes. We are thinking parental responsibility. We are thinking paternity suits. We are thinking in categories that have to do with physical connectedness or not.

Because in the ancient world sonship was bound up with identity more than with genes, the associations with sonship were rather different. That’s why there are so many Hebrew expressions that reflect this. Son of Belial. Son of worthlessness is what it means, which isn’t saying anything about your dad. It’s saying that your character is so demonstrably worthless that the only category to explain it is that you come from the worthless family. You’re worthless.

Son of a pig. You’re just basically unclean and unkempt, do you see? Son of a dog. And then, likewise, you see, on the positive front, Son of God can reflect something of the character of God. Jesus uses that sort of expression in the Beatitudes, does he not? “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.” Not children of God; literally the sons of God, which does not mean that we’re saved by this means. It doesn’t mean that we’re just like Jesus, and son in exactly his sense.

It means, rather, that God is the perfect peacemaker, and if we make peace then, in this respect, we’re acting like God. That’s what it means. Conversely, you can be a son of the Devil. Jesus has these interactions with the Jews in John 8. “You’re not really the children of Abraham,” Jesus says. “Are you greater than our father Abraham? Our father Abraham. Good grief! You can’t be the children of Abraham; Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad.” So they up the ante and say, “We’re actually children of God.”

“Can’t be,” says Jesus. “I come from God. He knows who I am. I know who he is. You don’t even know him. Let me tell you who is your father. You are of your father the Devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a liar from the beginning, and you’re telling a whole lot of lies, and he was a killer from the beginning and you’re trying to kill me. That proves that you’re the children of the Devil.”

He’s not trying to bring in some sort of Genesis 6 exposition of the sons of heaven somehow sleeping with the daughters of man. This is not some sort of angel-demon-human connection or anything like that. It’s purely a functional category. That’s all it is.

In one sense, this was particularly useful, then, when a human being became a king. He became a king, and thus he was to reflect God. This was used throughout the ancient Near East to reflect the local god. That was very common, because God was the supreme king and the human king was supposed to reflect God in as many ways as could be. So likewise, in the Bible, the king is supposed to reflect God in justice, in compassion, in truth, in integrity, in establishing justice in the land, and so on. That’s what the king was to be.

So when the king was established as king, that was when he became God’s son, that was when God engendered him, as it were. So enthronement language can become establishing-the-son language. In the New Testament some of the language regarding Jesus is also functional. Read John 5:16–30. There Jesus is the son par excellence. He is so much the Son, however, that everything the Father does, the Son also does. That’s a functional category.

Now that’s the difference between Jesus and me. I haven’t made a universe recently, but in Jesus’ case whatever the Father does the Son also does, do you see? Has the Father made the universe? So has the Son. Does the Father exercise final judgment? So does the Son. Does the Father raise people from the dead? So does the Son, because the Father has determined that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father.

So there is an ontology behind that, but the actual power of the language of John 5:16–30 is in fact, in the first instance, at the functional level. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does. You see, he’s the son par excellence. We are, at most, in Paul’s language, adopted sons. In this sense, then, David is becoming the son.

Moreover, in the first instance it cannot be referring to Jesus, because, after all, after these powerful words in 14a we read 14b, “When he does wrong I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men.” It has to be referring to Solomon, but the next verse shows exactly why God gives it in this form.

Namely, David is afraid, of course, that he will end up on the ashpit of history, the way Saul has ended up on the ashpit of history. You can be ever such a great king, but you can end so badly, even in one generation, let alone two or three or four or five. What will his legacy be? Even if David is faithful, and he doesn’t prove very faithful, how will his son be, or his son’s son, or his son’s son’s son? How do you establish a dynasty?

All you have to do is compare the brief dynasties of the northern kingdom with the Davidic dynasty in the south. What David is afraid of is that he or his dynasty will end up on the ashpit of history, and God instead says, “I will build a house for you.” House, now, with a pun in it, household rather than house temple, a dynasty.

Yet at the same time, the oracle ends up with strange words if you take them seriously. “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me. Your throne will be established forever.” You take that seriously, and it can work out only in one of two ways. Either you have a perpetual succession: one king dies, a new generation comes along, another king dies, then the next generation comes along, he dies, the next one comes along, world without end, amen.

Or eventually you have a king who lives forever. Those are the only possible ways that this could be literally fulfilled, and if that sounds just a bit too extravagant … This is roughly tenth century. Then you start thinking through later predictions of what this Davidic figure will be like.

We’re coming up to Christmas now. We’ll all be quoting Isaiah 9. “Unto us a son is given. Unto us a child is born. He shall reign on the throne of his father David. Of the increase of his kingdom there will be no end.” Clearly the Davidic king is in view. “He shall also be called the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”

What do you do, too, with Ezekiel 34? There God says, “Woe to the shepherds of Israel. They’ve fleeced the flock. They’ve robbed my people. They’ve been so wicked, but I will be the shepherd of my people. I will pasture them. I will lead them by clear water. I will nurture them. I will bind them up. I will judge them.”

About 25 times God says he will shepherd the people, and at the end of the whole section he says, “I will send my servant David to shepherd the people,” so that gradually the expectation of a David who is more than David, as the hymn-writer puts it, “great David’s greater son.” It is clarified and clarified across Scripture, giving you an anticipation that this text will be fulfilled spectacularly. And then finally …

3. A king with enormous privileges humbled (verses 18–29)

Verses 18 and following should not be overlooked. They are, in my view, some of the most moving texts in the life of David. Let me draw your attention merely to a couple of details. This sense of privilege now, “Who am I? What’s my family, O Sovereign Lord?” It’s so very different from the tone you get at the beginning of the chapter, where David is almost going to do God a favor. Now this is the way it ought to be.

Moreover, David recognizes, in verse 21, that this is taking place, as he puts it, “for the sake of your word and according to your will.” Not merely by your word; “For the sake of your word.” That is, so that God’s word will be free; freestanding, authoritative, recognized to be the creative power that brings it all about. It’s for the sake of preserving, of magnifying, the independent power of God’s effective word. “For the sake of your word and according to your will you have made this known.”

Then a quick survey of some of Israel’s status and all of that, and then, at the end, David ties his prayer to God’s promises, to the promises that God has just made. “Now, Lord God, keep forever the promise you have made concerning your servant. Do as you promised.” Verse 27: “O Lord Almighty, you have revealed this to your servant, saying, ‘I will build a house for you.’ That’s what you’ve just said, and that’s why your servant has found courage to offer you this prayer.”

Now here is a different man, isn’t he? Not the sort of man who is doing God a favor, the man who is building his life and hope and expectation and intercessory life on the words of God. “What is God’s will? I will pray in line with God’s will, and his will for me is beyond, beyond imagination, spectacularly glorious. Lord, all I ask is that you keep your own promises.”

But there is a sense, is there not, in which we who are called to be joint heirs with Jesus Christ, we who are called to be a kingdom of priests, we of whom it is said that God will not possibly fail to complete what he has begun in us, we can claim the promises of God so that we pray for our own security? We pray for our preservation. We pray that we may show ourselves to be sons of the kingdom. We pray for the final glorification, not, at the end of the day because we’re such fine people, but because of God’s promises, just like David.

Now then, in how you tilt all of that in any particular sermon, there is lots of room for creativity and imagination, but I would want to argue that preserving David’s historical context closely, as well as explaining how this passage finally reaches fulfillment in “great David’s greater son,” are joint enterprises in this business of exposition.