God’s Covenant with David

In a previous post, I wrote about the Messianic expectation of the Old Testament. In that post I tried to explain how the Messianic hope developed through the centuries. However, in that post I did not explain the origin and the complexity of that hope. As one reader wrote in a comment posted on Facebook, “the concept of Messiah varied greatly from group to group among the Jews. A variety of images appear in the literature describing a Messiah figure.”

His statement is true. It was not my desire in that post to describe the “variety of images” that were present in the Messianic expectation of Israel. These various images were the pieces of the puzzle I alluded to in that post. That would be the subject of another post.

In the present post, I want to discuss the origin of the Messianic hope in the Bible without going into the development of the idea. That, in brief, was the purpose of my first post.

The Messianic hope in the Old Testament begins with God’s covenant with David and God’s promise that David’s throne would be established forever. I consider 2 Samuel 7, the text dealing with God’s covenant with David, to be one of the most important passages in the Old Testament. In this text, God promised to make a house for David, that is, God guaranteed the perpetuity of David’s kingdom by establishing an eternal dynasty for him.

In this post, I will focus on God’s promise to David. God promised that he would be a father to every descendant of David who would sit on David’s throne. I will also deal with two other passages where God’s promise was reaffirmed to a descendant of David.

2 Samuel 7:14

“I will be his father, and he will be my son.”

God’s covenant with David is a unilateral covenant in which God established a new relationship with Israel through David. The Davidic covenant was based upon God’s promise to David that his throne would be established forever. It was an unconditional covenant because it was not based on human behavior. It was God who assured David that his throne would “be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16). God’s promise to David would bring stability to the monarchy and hope for the permanency of his kingdom in spite of the fact that historical events would threaten the fulfillment of God’s promises.

The promise in 2 Samuel 7:14 was not a reference to Christ and his kingdom, as many interpreters in the past and in the present have understood the passage. In the context of God’s promise to David, the one who would inherit David’s throne and build a house for God’s name would be Solomon:

12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.

13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever.

14 I will be his father, and he shall be my son. When he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men (2 Samuel 7:12-14).

Although the promise was made to Solomon and after him, to all the sons of David who became king of Judah, none of the kings who sat on the throne of David were able to meet the divine expectations for the ideal king. When Jerusalem was destroyed in 587 B.C. and the dynasty of David came to an end, many people believed that God’s promise to David had failed. However, the people of Israel had to wait many more years, even centuries, before the people could welcome another son of David:

“Hosanna to the Son of David” (Matthew 21:9).

“Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David” (Mark 11:10).

The concept of the Davidic king being the son of God helps to explain two very important texts in the Old Testament: Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 9:6.

Psalm 2:6-7

“I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.” I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.”

Psalm 2 is a Royal Psalm that was used for the celebration of the investiture of a new king. In this psalm God affirms the son of David to be his chosen one because he continues the kingly line of David. The king was proclaimed to be God’s son on Zion, God’s holy hill. God’s words reaffirmed the selection of a descendant of David to be God’s representative on earth and the election of Jerusalem, the city of David, as the place from which the new king would rule.

The “decree of the Lord” was the royal protocol which was given to the king during the investiture ceremony. This document endowed the new king with legitimacy and authority.

The statement, “You are my son; today I have begotten you” carries two important ideas. First, the expression “You are my son” says that on the day the descendant of David was crowned king, the king developed a new relationship with Yahweh, becoming his representative on earth. The day of the king’s coronation was the day when the divine decree took effect. The idea that the king was God’s son was common in the Ancient Near East. The idea of God as the Father and the king as the son also appears in other texts in the Old Testament (cf. Psalm 89:26-27; 1 Chronicles 28:6). Thus, in Judah, the king became the son of God on the day he ascended to the throne of David.

God’s covenant with David was considered to be an eternal covenant. God promised to David that “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16). The divine declaration to the new king in Psalm 2:7 served as an affirmation of the divine promise and as a renewal of God’s relationship with the house of David in the person of the new king.

Second, the expression “today I have begotten you” expresses a symbolic “new birth,” a process by which the son of David became the son of God by adoption. Adoption outside of the royal realm was common in Israel. Rachel adopted Bilhah’s son as her own son and Jacob adopted Ephraim and Manasseh, Joseph’s sons, as his own sons (Genesis 48:5). By this process of investiture and adoption, the new Davidic king became an heir of the divine promise to David and a representative of Yahweh before the people.

God’s words in Psalm 2:7 express the adoption of a new king as God’s son the moment this descendant of David assumed the throne to carry out God’s promise to David and rule over God’s people.

Isaiah 9:6

“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

This passage, Isaiah 9:5-6 (Hebrew 9:4-5) is a hymn celebrating the coronation of a new king. The rejoicing of the people in 9:3-4 (Hebrew 9:2-3) is the result of the celebration at the enthronement of a new king who will conquer the enemies who oppressed the people.

Verse 4 describes the situation of the oppressed people: “For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.” In this verse, the oppressed people are treated like animals of burden. The people carry a heavy yoke upon their shoulders and are forced to labor hard by the rod which chastises them.

The day of the people’s redemption began the day the son of David was crowned king of Judah and ascended the throne of his father. The ascension of a new heir to the throne of David and his adoption by God was seen as the fulfillment of God’s promise to David in 2 Samuel 7:12-14, a promise which brought hope of deliverance from the oppression imposed upon the people of God by the heavy hand of Assyria.

This new king was Hezekiah and the words used by the prophet to describe the new king are the divine ideals for God’s representative and are meant to describe the rule of the one who would sit on David’s throne, but ideals which were never attained by Hezekiah or any other king. It was the failure of the kings of Judah to attain these ideals that forced the people to look to the future and hope for the coming of a new David.

Claude Mariottini

Professor of Old Testament

Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Covenant, David, 2 Samuel 7, Messiah, Psalm 2:7, Isaiah 9:6

God’s Promise To Abraham

When God called Abraham and told him to leave his country, his family, and his father’s house, God promised that he would give him a land in which he and his descendants would settle and become a great nation. The promise that God would give Abraham and his descendants the land of Canaan is one of the major themes of the Pentateuch. The promise of the giving of the land was made to Abraham and renewed to Isaac and Jacob.

God’s gift of the land to Abraham contains three elements: a promise, a covenant, and an oath. In addition, for Abraham to become a great nation, God also made another promise, the promise of progeny, that is, that Abraham’s own son would inherit the land.

The Promise

When God called Abraham to leave his country, God promised him that he and his descendants would become a great nation (Genesis 12:1-3). According to Walter Brueggemann (p. 106), “the promise is God’s power and will to create a new future sharply discontinuous with the past and the present. The promise is God’s resolve to form a new community wrought only by miracle and reliant only on God’s faithfulness.”

The promise that Abraham and his descendants would become a great nation contains implicit in it another promise, the promise that God would give him the land of Canaan, since a great nation cannot come into being without a land of its own. God’s promise to Abraham also implies that God would give Abraham an heir, a son who would carry his name and eventually inherit the land as the fulfillment of the divine promise.

But how could God’s promise to Abraham that he would become a great nation be accomplished when his wife Sarah was barren? The barrenness was a stumbling block to the fulfillment of the promise. How could an old man and an old woman be fruitful and become a source of blessings to many? Abraham trusted God’s promise and took God at his word: “I will bless you;” “You shall become a great nation.” God’s promise was enough for Abraham. He believed and in believing he was blessed. And in being blessed Abraham’s descendants became a great nation and his descendants received the promised land.

The Covenant

Believing in God’s promise, Abraham left Haran to go to Canaan. In Canaan Abraham was a stranger, a pilgrim in the land, sojourning from place to place, traveling through Shechem to the oak of Moreh and from there to Bethel and finally to the Negev (Genesis 12:6-9).

Abraham sojourned in Canaan waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promise that he would have a son and that through his son he would inherit the land that was promised to him. However, Sarah’s barrenness continued and Abraham remained childless and the fulfillment of the promise was in doubt.

In his anguish to have a son who would inherit the promise, and probably plagued by doubt of ever having an offspring, Abraham adopted Eliezer of Damascus, a servant and the steward of his house, as his heir. Abraham understood that the fulfillment of God’s promise required an heir, a son who was to be born from his family, in whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And yet, Abraham was old and was about to die childless!

It is at this time that God appeared again to Abraham, telling him not to be afraid because his reward would be great (Genesis 15:1-2). The reward that God had promised to Abraham was the land, but for Abraham to receive his reward, he needed a son. And God again promised Abraham that he would have a son: “This man shall not be your heir; your own son shall be your heir” (Genesis 15:4).

To confirm to Abraham that his promise would be fulfilled, that there would be a future for Abraham in the land of promise, God renewed the promise of a son by establishing a covenant with Abraham: “On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates’” (Genesis 15:18).

A covenant is an agreement enacted between two people in which one or both parties of the covenant make promises to perform a certain action. The Hebrew word berith, which in English is translated by the word “covenant,” comes from a root which means “to cut,” that is, the act of cutting or dividing of animals used in the covenant ceremony into two parts. As an act of establishing a covenant, the contracting parties pass between the two halves, thus ratifying the covenant.

The ritual, in which God passed between the two halves of the sacrificed animals, represents God’s unqualified intent to do what he had promised to Abraham. In the Ancient Near East, the passing between the two halves of the sacrificed animals meant the invocation of a curse. In one of his oracles, the prophet Jeremiah makes a passing reference to this ritual: “And the men who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant which they made before me, I will make like the calf which they cut in two and passed between its parts” (Jeremiah 34:18).

In his covenant with Abraham, God is the only one who walks between the slain animals, signifying that God’s promise to give Abraham a son and the land of Canaan was binding on God as an eternal promise.

The Oath

God’s promise to Abraham was marked by the tension between promise and fulfillment. Twice God had made the promise to Abraham that his heir would inherit the promise. When Abraham left Haran he was seventy-five years old (Genesis 12:4). Twenty four years later, when Abraham was ninety-nine (Genesis 17:1), the promise that “your own son shall be your heir” (Genesis 15:4) had not yet been fulfilled. Sarah remained childless and the fulfillment of the promise was in jeopardy.

The reality of Sarah’s barrenness again brought anguish to Abraham. Would the promise God made while he was in Haran be kept? Would the promise God made at the time the covenant was established be fulfilled? Could God be trusted to fulfill his promise of an heir and of the giving of the land?

Hoping against hope, Abraham and Sarah took the initiative to work out the fulfillment of the promise by taking matters into their own hands. Instead of waiting on God to fulfill his promise, Sarah gave Hagar, her Egyptian servant, to Abraham as a wife. Although Sarah’s motive could be considered noble, the action itself was wrong because it came out of Abraham’s unwillingness to wait on God to fulfill his promise.

Out of this union Ishmael was born but Ishmael was not to be the heir of the promise. God appeared to Abraham to assure him that Sarah in her old age would become the mother of a son and that God’s everlasting covenant would be with Isaac and his descendants after him and not with Ishmael (Genesis 17:19).

The birth of Isaac marks the fulfillment of one of God’s promises to Abraham: the promise of an heir. Isaac had been the child of his parents’s many prayers and the fulfillment of a hope that for many years seemed beyond hope. But then, God came to Abraham and asked him to sacrifice his son Isaac.

God’s request appeared to be a denial of the promise. If God’s promise of the land would be fulfilled in Isaac, why would God ask Abraham to sacrifice his son? Without a son there would be no descendants, no one to inherit the land, no future for Abraham. And yet, Abraham was willing to obey God one more time, believing that the God who gave him a son could also give him a future without a son.

Without hesitation Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son. Three days after the divine request, Abraham came to the place God had selected for the sacrifice. As Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, God intervened and stayed the sacrifice of Isaac. In light of Abraham’s loyalty, God swore an oath:

“I am taking an oath on my own name, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not refused to give me your son, your only son, I will certainly bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of their enemies' cities. Through your descendant all the nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me” (Genesis 22:16-18).

An oath is an appeal to divine authority to ratify the truth of an assertion. When the people of Israel wanted to establish the truth of a statement, they called on God to be a witness and to validate the truth of the statement. The oath that God made to Abraham in his own name was a sure guarantee that Abraham’s descendants would be numerous and that they would receive the land of Canaan as their inheritance, the land that God had promised to give to him because of his willingness to believe in God. God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants would receive the land included a covenant and an oath. God gave the descendants of Abraham the land of Canaan because God’s promises are faithful. God’s promise to Abraham was sealed by a covenant and affirmed by an oath. As the author of the book of Hebrews wrote:

“When people take oaths, they base their oaths on someone greater than themselves. Their oaths guarantee what they say and end all arguments. God wouldn't change his plan. He wanted to make this perfectly clear to those who would receive his promise, so he took an oath. God did this so that [they] would be encouraged. God cannot lie when he takes an oath or makes a promise” (Hebrews 6:16-18).

Reference: Walter Brueggemann, Genesis. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Abraham, Canaan, Covenant, Oath, Promised Land

The Minister's Covenant

A few days ago, I received a catalog announcing the sale of a book, The Valley of Vision. This book is a collection of Puritan prayers and devotions, edited by Arthus Bennet. The book was published also with an audio edition containing 7 CDs.

The publisher, The Banner of Truth, offers an audio sample on line. The sample, “The Valley of Vision,” is a beautiful prayer that shows the devotion and piety of those who composed these prayers. Click here to hear the sample audio.

The following is the daily devotion for Monday, 09, April 2007:

The Minister's Covenant

Lord Jesus,
True God, everlasting Life,
Redeemer of sinners,
I give my body, soul, intellect, will, affections
to thee.

I call the day, sun,
earth, trees, stones,
wind, rain, frost, snow,
my home, bed, table, food,
books, drink, clothes,
to witness that I come to thee for rest of soul
from the thunders of guilt
and dread of eternity.

Grant me
a circumcised heart that I may love thee,
a right spirit that I may seek thy glory,
a principle within which thou wilt own,
an interest in the blood that cleanses,
the righteousness that justifies,
the redemption that delivers,
that I may not be found a hypocrite on
Judgment Day.

For the sake of thy cruel death take my time,
strength, gifts, talents, usefulness, piety,
which in full purpose of heart I consecrate to thee.
Let not sin find a place in my heart to becloud my
vision,
and may no foolish act wither my gifts.

Preserve me from the falls by which others stumble,
that thy name may not be blasphemed or wounded,
that thy people may not be grieved,
that thine enemies may not be hardened,
that my peace may not be injured.

Give me a heart full of love to thyself and to others.
Let me discover in this life what I am before thee,
that I may not find myself another character
hereafter.

Prepare me for death,
that I may not die after long affliction or suddenly,
but after short illness, with no confusion or disorder,
and a quiet discharge in peace, with adieu
to brethren.

Let not my days end like lumber in a house,
but give me a silent removing from one world
to another.
Inscribe these petitions in thy book,
present them to thy Father,
Set thine Amen to them, as I do on my part
of the covenant.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Covenant, Devotion, Ministry, Prayer