David

David was the youngest son of a Bethlehem farmer, and Scripture introduces him as the son nobody thought to call in from the field. Samuel came to the house with a horn of oil, seven brothers walked past the prophet, and the LORD said of the oldest that He does not see as man sees. The son who was sent for was anointed in front of his family, and then he went back to the sheep. The crown took about fifteen years to reach him. He came to the army carrying food to his brothers and left it as the man who had killed the Philistine champion. He married into Saul's family, served at Saul's court, and then spent years running from Saul through the caves and border towns of Judah with four hundred distressed and indebted men behind him. Twice he had the king asleep in front of him and twice he refused, and both times the argument for killing came from his own men and was dressed as God's providence. He was thirty at his coronation and he reigned forty years, seven of them at Hebron over Judah alone and thirty-three at Jerusalem over the whole nation. He took the fortress of Zion from the Jebusites and made it his capital. He brought the ark of God up to that city, dancing in front of it in a linen ephod while his wife watched from a window and despised him for it. Then God made him a promise. David wanted to build a house for the ark, and 2 Samuel 7 turns the offer around. God would build David a house instead, a descendant from his own body, a throne established forever, and a loving devotion that would not be taken away as it had been taken from Saul. David went in and sat down before the LORD to answer it, which no other man in the Hebrew Bible does. What he got right is written down. He fought for God's name rather than his own reputation. He mourned the man who hunted him in the same poem as the friend who saved him. He kept an oath sworn to Jonathan by seating Jonathan's lame son at his own table for life, years after Jonathan died. He corrected the ark procession the moment he learned what he had done wrong. He refused to drink water three men had risked their lives to fetch, and he refused a free threshing floor because he would not offer God something that cost him nothing. What he got wrong is written down in the same books and at the same weight. He stayed home from the war, sent for another man's wife, and then had her husband killed to hide what he had done, and the narrator ends that chapter by saying the thing David had done was evil in the sight of the LORD. He lied at Nob and eighty-five priests died for it, and he said out loud that their blood was on him. He counted his fighting men and called the act foolish afterward. He was furious when Amnon violated Tamar and he did nothing, and Absalom's revenge and revolt grew out of that silence. When Nathan told him the story of the poor man's lamb, David pronounced the sentence on the guilty man himself: he must pay for the lamb four times over. Four of David's own sons died before he did: the infant of 2 Samuel 12:14, then Amnon, then Absalom, then Adonijah, put to death in the first days of Solomon's reign. He wrote a large part of Israel's hymnbook, and the psalms that carry his name run from Psalm 23 through Psalm 51 to the psalms the New Testament reads of Christ. He died old and was buried in the city he had taken. Long after the throne in Jerusalem went dark, the promise made to him kept being quoted, and the New Testament opens by calling Jesus the son of David and closes with Jesus calling Himself the Root and the Offspring of David.

The promise of 2 Samuel 7 is where the line to Christ starts, and the New Testament draws it in its own words. Gabriel tells Mary, He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end!” Hebrews 1:5 sets Psalm 2:7 beside the father and son line of 2 Samuel 7:14 and applies both to the Son. I will be his Father, and he will be My son. When he does wrong, I will discipline him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men. Tertullian was already reading the promise past Solomon in the early third century, in Against Marcion, on the ground that a throne forever and a house built for God's Name suit Christ rather than a temporal king. Basil of Caesarea read the throne of David in the fourth century as the indestructible kingdom the Lord sits on, and noted that by the time Christ came the kingdom of Judea had passed to Herod. The New Testament calls Jesus the son of David more often than it calls Him almost anything else. Matthew opens with it. This is the record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham: Four verses later the genealogy refuses to tidy the story up. and Jesse the father of David the king. Next: David was the father of Solomon by Uriah’s wife, Paul begins Romans with a descendant of David according to the flesh. Revelation closes the canon with Jesus naming Himself twice over. Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed to open the scroll and its seven seals.” “I, Jesus, have sent My angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the bright Morning Star.” He is the source David came from and the descendant who came from David, which is the point Jesus Himself pressed at Matthew 22:41-45 when He asked how David could call his own son Lord. The psalms carry the same weight in the New Testament's hands. Jesus quotes Psalm 110:1 at Matthew 22:44, Peter quotes it at Pentecost, and the letters return to it again and again. The LORD said to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.” Psalm 22 supplies the cry from the cross at 22:1 and the dividing of the garments at 22:18, and the Gospels quote both at the crucifixion. Peter's argument at Acts 2:29-31 is the plainest case of all. David's tomb was still in Jerusalem, so the psalm he wrote was not about himself. Foreseeing this, David spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did His body see decay. The shepherd runs through the life before any commentator touches it. God says He took David from the pasture: Now then, you are to tell My servant David that this is what the LORD of Hosts says: I took you from the pasture, from following the flock, to be the ruler over My people Israel. Chronicles puts it as a charge. Even in times past, while Saul was king, you were the one who led Israel out and brought them back. And the LORD your God said, ‘You will shepherd My people Israel, and you will be ruler over them.’” In the census David uses the figure of himself and of the nation: When David saw the angel striking down the people, he said to the LORD, “Surely I, the shepherd, have sinned and acted wickedly. But these sheep, what have they done? Please, let Your hand fall upon me and my father’s house.” Psalm 23 is a shepherd's psalm written by a shepherd about the LORD, and it opens The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. Ezekiel names the figure directly, centuries after David's death: I will appoint over them one shepherd, My servant David, and he will feed them. He will feed them and be their shepherd. John 10 takes the figure to Christ. Origen read Psalm 23:4 in the middle of the third century as movement rather than settlement, a man walking through the shadow and not sitting down in it, because the Lord goes through it with him. The early Christian readings are named here with their centuries rather than with a single year, because the dates of several of these works could not be confirmed in this lane. Justin Martyr read the promise to David as fulfilled in Christ in the second century. Hippolytus of Rome read the prayer of Psalm 51:10 in the early third century as a prayer for the Holy Spirit, and set it beside Pentecost. Cyril of Jerusalem held David up in the fourth century as the catechumen's example of repentance. Ambrose of Milan used Nathan's word to David as a rebuke to an emperor in the late fourth century. Augustine of Hippo read Psalm 51 in the fifth century as the model of penitence, and set David's confession beside Saul's identical words. None of this moves the promise away from Israel. Psalm 89:34 has God refuse to break what He swore. I will not violate My covenant or alter the utterance of My lips. The covenant with David's line is not transferred to anyone, and this site does not teach that the church has replaced Israel. Where a reading here is typological it is presented as a reading, offered by named men. Where this site teaches a coming visible reign of Christ on David's throne it teaches it as this site's tradition, in the same words its Revelation and end times pages use, and never as a verdict stamped on a reader.