2 Samuel7:1–17

i. Cedar against curtain: the good idea nobody checked — 7:1-3

The unit opens with a man at rest and a God still in transit. וַיְהִי (way·hî) sets the scene twice over: the king sat (H3427 yâshab) in his house, and YHWH had caused rest for him (Hifil of H5117 nûwach). Ellicott and Pulpit agree that the placement is topical rather than chronological, Ellicott because the historian wished to record David's further purposes in the same direction as ch. 6, Pulpit because the note of rest implies the successful end of something larger than the Philistine campaigns; K&D presses the same words further, arguing from v. 9 that David had by then fought and humbled all the enemies round about, so that the history cannot be in strict order. Cambridge holds both ends: after some of the wars of ch. 8, yet before the birth of Solomon (v. 12).

David's complaint is two participles of one verb. He is יוֹשֵׁב in a house of cedars; the ark is יֹשֵׁב within הַיְרִיעָה, the curtain. K&D's philological note is the sharpest thing said about the verse: the singular yᵉrîʻâh is the Exodus 26:2 word for the inner covering sewn of lengths of tapestry, so that “within the curtain” means surrounded by the tent-cloth. JFB supplies the material contrast, that cedar was the rarest and most valuable timber, and that the elegance of David's mansion against the ark's temporary shelter distressed his pious mind. Gill names the exact house: not the Mosaic tabernacle, which stood at Gibeon, but the tent David himself had pitched in ch. 6.

Then Nathan answers, and every commentator in the brief marks the same fault line. Henry: Nathan did not speak as a prophet, but as a godly man, encouraging David by his private judgment. Barnes: in v. 3 he spoke his own private opinion; in v. 4 this was corrected by the word of the Lord. JFB generalises it, that prophets following the impulse of their own feelings fell into frequent mistakes. Benson and Poole use nearly identical language about a pious design hastily approved before God was consulted. Geneva puts it in one clause: Nathan spoke according to man's judgment and not by the spirit of prophecy. K&D, quoting J. H. Michaelis, says he sanctioned it from his own feelings, and not by divine revelation. That is six independent witnesses to a single point: the office does not sanctify every sentence.

ii. The God who walks: a refusal with no reason attached — 7:4-7

The correction arrives the same night. Gill and Poole both notice the speed and read it as mercy: God would not suffer either man to lie long in the error, nor let David incur expense on it; JFB says the command came before David could take any measures. Pulpit adds the caution that we are not told how the word came, only that v. 17 calls it a vision.

The answer is a question with the pronoun fronted: הַאַתָּה (ha·ʼat·tāh). Cambridge: “Thou is emphatic. The question of course is equivalent to a negative,” and K&D notes that Chronicles converts it into the flat “thou shalt not.” But the refusal is framed by the title my servant, and Ellicott, Cambridge and Poole all stress that this is a mark of honour used of Moses and Joshua, so that nothing of divine displeasure is conveyed. Ellicott's footnote is the most disciplined sentence in the whole brief: the two reasons commentators usually supply (that God must build David's house first, and that the kingdom was not yet settled) are not assigned in the divine word, and it is better to keep only to what is assigned. The reason David himself later gives, that he was a man of war who had shed blood (1 Chronicles 22:8; 28:3), Ellicott, Cambridge and Maclaren all import from elsewhere, and they say so.

What the text does give is a verb: מִתְהַלֵּךְ, the Hitpael of hâlak, God walking Himself to and fro in a tent and a dwelling. K&D turns it into an image: a tent is a traveller's dwelling, and so long as God's dwelling was a tent, He appeared as one going from place to place. Gill maps the journey onto real ground, Gilgal, Shiloh, Nob, Gibeon; Barnes hears the constant deliberate reference to the Exodus and the books of Moses. Then comes the cognate-accusative question, הֲדָבָר דִּבַּרְתִּי, “a word did I speak?”, which Poole renders “did I ever give any command about it?” K&D draws the two grounds together: God had lived in a tent in the midst of His people, and He had never commanded any former prince or tribe to build a temple, which proves not that David is presumptuous but that no earlier leader was negligent.

Here the unit meets its one hard textual problem. שִׁבְטֵי (tribes) stands where 1 Chronicles 17:6 has šōp̄ᵉṭê (judges), one letter apart. Ellicott, Barnes, Cambridge, Pulpit and K&D keep “tribes,” explaining it of whichever tribe supplied the ruler of the hour (Ephraim under Joshua, Benjamin under Saul, Judah under David) and appealing to Psalm 78:67-68 and 1 Chronicles 28:4; K&D adds the decisive argument that if judges had been original, the rise of tribes would be inexplicable. Poole and Gill instead read the same consonants as “sceptres,” hence sceptre-bearers, as at Genesis 49:10. We record the dispute rather than resolve it.

iii. From the pasture: God takes the verb back — 7:8-11

K&D notes that the divine name expands exactly here, from YHWH (v. 5) to YHWH of Hosts, because from this point God speaks as God of the universe. And every clause of the retrospect has God as subject: I took, I was with thee, I cut off, I have made thee a name. Ellicott corrects “sheepcote” to “pasture” and Cambridge sends us to Psalm 78:70-71; Pulpit calls it the meadow. Gill hears no reproach in the reminder, only the observation of God's goodness, and recalls that Cyrus too is called a shepherd, and Agamemnon in Homer the shepherd of the people. Poole compresses the whole clause into a sentence of divine constancy: I advanced thee, and I do not repent of it.

Verses 10 and 11 are where the English tenses carry an interpretive decision. Ellicott, Barnes and Cambridge all insist there is no change of tense in the original and that the verbs should be read as perfects: I have appointed, I have planted, and they dwell in their own place. Barnes says this was already done by the consolidation of David's kingdom. Pulpit agrees and spells out the consequence, that Jehovah was not about to plant Israel but had just done so completely. Poole and Gill hold the other side, preferring a future and (in Gill's case) a still-unfulfilled restoration; Poole frankly says the past reading makes the promise redundant, since the work was already done. Benson and Poole both add the honest qualification the text leaves unstated, that the promise of never being disturbed again must be read with a condition, since Israel did notoriously forsake God. K&D takes yet another route through the syntax, joining “from the day I appointed judges” backward to “as at the beginning,” and reading וַהֲנִיחֹתִי as a true future, the rest still to be maintained rather than the rest already given in v. 1.

Then the pun lands. K&D, following Thenius, states it as a general truth: God must first build a man's house before the man can build God's house. Gill puts it pastorally, that whereas David was desirous of building an house for God, God would build up an house for him; Poole notes the exchange is a reward, “for thy good intentions to make him an house.” The Hebrew is precise about which verb goes with which subject. David is refused bânâh (v. 5); Solomon is granted bânâh (v. 13); what God does for David in v. 11 is ʻâsâh, make. Nobody in the brief says this, and we offer it as observation, not as a claim any of them endorsed.

iv. Seed, rod, and for ever: a promise that outgrows its first recipient — 7:12-17

On v. 12 the commentators divide neatly by temperament. Pulpit and K&D argue from the future tense that Solomon was not yet born, K&D adding that the mention of rest in v. 1 does not force a late date. Ellicott concedes the point may hold but warns that the future could be mere assimilation to the futures of the whole passage. JFB notices something the others do not: the succession went to a son born after this word, contrary to established usage, which he takes as evidence of a divine ordinance. Cambridge lays out the threefold reference without embarrassment: first Solomon, who himself recognises the fulfilment at 1 Kings 8:15-20; then the line of David's descendants; and finally Christ, in whom the prophecy reaches its highest fulfilment.

Verse 14 is the verse the New Testament quotes. Poole marks the limit exactly: the sonship passes through Solomon to Christ, but the clause “if he commit iniquity” terminates in Solomon, “who therein was no type of Christ.” Henry says the same in different words, that the committing of iniquity cannot be applied to the Messiah himself, but to his spiritual seed. Gill and Cambridge read the discipline as real and as fatherly, and K&D takes it in a harder sense. On the rod of men, Gill and Geneva and Benson read gentleness, chastisement such as fathers use; K&D explicitly rejects that, against Clericus, and reads punishments such as are inflicted on all men who go astray, from which even David's seed is not excepted. Geneva's marginal f and K&D's sentence are in flat disagreement, and we leave them so. The word for rod, שֵׁבֶט, is the same noun that stood for “tribes” in v. 7.

Verse 15 turns on one root used three times: יָסוּר (Qal) and הֲסִרֹתִי twice (Hifil). Cambridge sees it and says so: “The three verbs belong to the same root.” Barnes connects the promise to Isaiah 55:3, the sure mercies of David, mercies like streams of water that never dry up, and notes that the word rendered “established” in v. 16 is the same as Isaiah's “sure.” Ellicott's contrast is the sharpest: Saul and his house were utterly and permanently set aside, while David's descendants will be punished yet never forgotten. Gill makes the same distinction technical, that what was taken from Saul was taken from his posterity, not from his person.

On v. 16 the commentators split over one word, לְפָנֶיךָ, “before thee.” Cambridge calls the received explanation forced and follows the LXX in reading “before me,” appealing to vv. 26 and 29; Barnes says “before me” is probably the true reading and suspects textual corruption; Ellicott says the LXX changed it unnecessarily; Poole and Gill defend “before thee” as meaning David saw the beginning of it in Solomon and the end of it by faith in the Messiah. Then Nathan speaks, and Benson gives him his due: he manifested his integrity, not being ashamed to retract his own words when he was better taught of God, so that the correction of his fault was more remarkable than the fault itself.