A House for my Name and a Throne

The Davidic Administration of the Covenant of Grace

The backdrop of David is Israel’s development from a nation under the political guardianship of judges and priests to one under a monarchy. Deuteronomy 17 is a foundational passage in that it prescribes the rule of the former and yet anticipates the latter. 1 Samuel 8 is also noteworthy in that Israel’s own part to play was sinful. This creates a complex and debated state of affairs. Was the monarchy God’s will or not? Even if we carefully distinguish between God’s will of decree and His will of precept, there remains the same duality already present in the Deuteronomy 17 passage. The best way to parse this out is in the following language: God was pleased to raise up a king, and God was displeased with Israel for wanting to raise up a king. The only difficulty is resolved in looking at Israel’s motives and standards.

For that, we look directly at the narrative of 1 Samuel 8.

Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the LORD. And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them” (1 Sam. 8:4-9).

The people feigned a righteous motive. Samuel’s sons did not walk in the ways of their father. All true. Yet their second rationale betrays them: Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations. As with the Lord’s prohibition against treaty-making with the pagans, so with copying their king-making. It is not monarchy per se that is condemned here, but the rule of man overtaking the rule of law. Modern commentators fall off to one of two ditches. Either they wish to uphold the royal typology of Christ by highlighting Israel’s motive against the traditional appeal to the Mosaic “republic” against the “ways of the king” (v. 9) that spell centralized statism; or else they miss God’s redemptive-historical end in positioning David toward Christ in the name of upholding the Bible’s civics lesson. In fact, both are in play, and it is typical of our truncated modern theologies that one is pit against the other.

Richard Belcher explains why the Davidic administration represents “a high point of Old Testament theology,” namely:

The kingdom of God arrives in a formal manner with indications of how God will rule among his people. God situates his throne in a single locality, and the Davidic line is established as the line through which God will exercise his rule on earth.1

To review the progress of the covenant of grace: (1) the Abrahamic administration is the initial, familial phase; (2) the Mosaic administration is the national, comprehensive legal phase; and now (3) the Davidic administration is the royal-kingdom phase.

We will unpack this covenant with David in three parts—in terms of 1. Promises, 2. Difficulties, and 3. Implications.

Davidic Promises

We must begin in 2 Samuel 7, as that is the narrative portion of Scripture in which we see God’s promises to David. It is a point where things finally slow down in the restless journey of David from being anointed by Samuel, through his fleeing from Saul, to the consolidation of the kingdom in Jerusalem and bringing the ark of God’s presence into the city. The construction of a house for God was the next logical step.

We must recall those elements of a covenant. One reason is that here we have another case of the word “covenant” absent in the foundational narrative text. Yet also as in other cases, other biblical passages come to our aid. In the last words of David’s life, he says, “For does not my house stand so with God? For he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure” (2 Sam. 23:5).

You have said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant … and my covenant will stand firm for him … I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips” (Ps. 89:3, 28, 34)

If your sons keep my covenant and my testimonies that I shall teach them, their sons also forever shall sit on your throne (Ps. 132:12).

Even without reading the specifics in the surrounding context of these passages, in these brief words, we can already gather that these refer the covenant in view to David as its recipient, and has a “house” and a throne in view.

The first was a historical prologue. In this case, it comes through the prophet Nathan,

“Go and tell my servant David, ‘Thus says the LORD: Would you build me a house to dwell in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling. In all places where I have moved with all the people of Israel, did I speak a word with any of the judges of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”’ Now, therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel. And I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off all your enemies from before you (vv. 5-9a).

Note the question to begin. Belcher comments, “The section ends with the same question, but this time it is set in the period of the judges (7:7). The fact that this question frames this section (7:4-7) shows how important the question is. The point seems to be that the building of a temple should be at God’s initiative.”2

Directly following this comes the promises:

And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel. And I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the LORD declares to you that the LORD will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. (vv. 9b-14a).

Davidic Difficulties

The first immediate objection to this covenant comes from how that last verse ends:

When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you (vv. 14b-15).

Our first (and usually only) thought is to resolve the “Bible difficulty.” We move too fast.

Belcher has additional commentary that is necessary here: “The relationship between the kingdom, the temple, and this son born to David is important. David, the man of war, is not allowed to build the temple, which is reserved for his son Solomon, the man of peace.”3 Here are two keys that link David and Solomon to Christ. First, the garden in which Adam was placed and then land in which Abraham was placed, is narrowed down to a city and a hill called Zion or Jerusalem; and second, the king is related to God as a son. We read of both in the second Psalm,

“As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.” I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you” (Ps. 2:6-7).

Anyone familiar with biblical typology understands the concept of dual fulfillment. One of the main places that we see this is in the royal Psalms, like Psalm 2. When there is nothing in the prophecy unbecoming to the nature of Christ, it does not occur to the Christian reader of Scripture to struggle with whether or not this or that sentence can refer to both the immediate king David and the ultimate King Jesus. It is only when something beneath Jesus comes up that we begin to assume that one part of the text can refer only to the first king if the whole relates only to the first king. That is understandable at first.

But on what grounds do we maintain that one part of the text can refer only to the first king if the whole relates only to the first king? The answer will be repeated as axiomatic: Well, because of the sin of course! Whether we are aware of it or not, this already assumes that the entire purpose of the passage is to prophecy about Jesus. Our hearers may still sit incredulously as to why that would matter. “If he is spoken of at all in this way (with sin), then it cannot be about Him!” But what does “this way” and “it” mean in this context? Simply repeating “sin” doesn’t answer the question. Our anxieties have failed to consider whether or not we have taken the passage out of context precisely by making “it” only about Christ. That is, we are operating with a “zero-sum” approach to the referents in the whole and its parts.

In revisiting the way that Old Testament prophets speak in dual fulfillment, we ought to also remember the way that covenant narratives speak. In other words, we must remember that this follows the same biblical pattern of covenant ceremonies, so that what comes with promises are stipulations, and the consequences of not meeting them. That is the immediate context. Immediate context does not exclude mediate context, but it does condition it. Solomon and his descendants (as descendants of the ideal prototype king, David) must answer to how they preform as types. When they sin, such and such must happen to them. Christ can be the ultimate fulfillment of the seed promise without being the proximate referent of the sin performance. If this seems odd, simply revisit Adam and Israel’s status as God’s son and how they failed. Simply revisit the back and forth interplay of “Servant of the Lord,” in which Isaiah treats the figure as the collective referent of Israel at one moment and then the individual referent of Jesus in the next. This is the norm.

This brings up the second difficulty. It can be stated in the form of a question that we have already considered about the other administrations. Is this covenant with David fundamentally conditional or unconditional? Belcher explains this well,

The covenant has a conditional aspect that relates to each individual king. Each king must keep the covenant, and if a king does not keep it, then God may use other nations to bring judgment against the king and the people. The covenant also has an unconditional element to it so that the promises of an enduring dynasty and kingdom are not ultimately dependent on the obedience of individual kings. God will not remove his covenant loyalty from the line of David and choose another dynasty in place of it, as he did with Saul.4

The third and final difficulty I will mention is that this dynasty was not supposed to cease: just as it was prophesied through Jacob, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah” (Gen. 49:10). The great historical event that challenged this was the fall of Jerusalem at the hand of the Babylonians in 586 BC. Psalm 89 was written with this in view. In one sense, it is a Psalm of Lament (vv. 38-51), yet it reaffirms a confident outlook in God’s covenant faithfulness,

For I said, “Steadfast love will be built up forever; in the heavens you will establish your faithfulness.” You have said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: ‘I will establish your offspring forever, and build your throne for all generations’” (vv. 2-4).

The people are punished for their civic unfaithfulness; the kings are subject to humiliation because they have not—except for those brief revivals under Hezekiah and Josiah—been faithful. So, in a sense, the embodied chastised one who is first formed in Solomon, becomes the whole line of the Judahite kings. As Israel as a whole is spoken of as Servant of the Lord by Isaiah, only to give way to the perfect Servant to come, so the kings of Judah must undergo the humiliation of just exile, so that the Lion of the Tribe of Judah can fulfill the role with perfect justice.

I will establish his offspring forever and his throne as the days of the heavens … Once for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David. His offspring shall endure forever, his lthrone as long as the sun before me (vv. 29, 35-36).

Book V of the Psalms contain not only a group of royal Psalms that point toward the restoration, but of a series called the Psalms of Ascent, ultimately symbolizing the pilgrimage of the people “up” to Mount Zion to come. It is on that “higher plane” that the seed coming to Christ realize that the scepter has not in fact departed from the throne.

Davidic Implications

The fact that a line of kings was part of the promise to Abraham—“kings shall come from you” (Gen. 17:6)—and the fact that one of Christ’s three offices as Mediator is King, should prompt the question as to how the kingdom and the gospel relate to each other. The expression “gospel of the kingdom” (Mat. 4:23; cf. 9:35; 24:14) is even used by Jesus. Whereas dispensationalists have erroneously seized upon this expression to divide this gospel from the gospel of grace, we do not want to fly to the other extreme, denying any special significance to the expression.

The design of a king answers to a basic human need. It is embedded in the concept of the image of God. Belcher explains that,

The idea of kingship does not just appear in Israel’s history at the time of the institution of kinship with Saul. The concept of rule goes back to Genesis 1-2, particularly 1:26-28, where every human being is to rule over creation for the glory of God. God’s rule on the earth is accomplished through the agency of human dominion, but the fall makes dominion more difficult because in it the earth is cursed.5

It is also suggested in the first gospel promise, since what Adam failed to do, the Seed of the woman would. To the serpent: “he shall bruise your head” (Gen. 3:15).

As is the prophet and the priest, so is the king a mediator between God and the people. Although there can be no confusion of the offices, nor any intrusion into the other’s activities, nonetheless, the king had a care toward the sacrifices.

Belcher gives a summary here:

David sets up the first altar for Yahweh in Jerusalem (2 Sam. 24:25), conceives the idea of building a temple, and then makes plans for it. The kings are able to perform certain priestly acts. Solomon offers sacrifices at the dedication of the temple (1 Kings 8) and then at the three great feasts of the year (1 Kings 9:25). Both David and Solomon bless the people in the sanctuary (2 Sam. 6:18; 1 Kings 8:14), and David wears the loincloth, which was the vestment of officiating priests (2 Sam. 6:14).6

Although we have seen that Adam and Christ are unique as covenant heads of the whole race included in them, nonetheless, the king of any nation acts as a mediator in a similar sense. While God does not count the sins of this head to his people in the same way as the heads of those two covenants, yet the obedience or disobedience of the king of Israel certainly did have the destinies of the people wrapped up in it. For instance, immediately after the division of the kingdom, the Lord said that, “he will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and made Israel to sin” (1 Kings 14:16).

That calls attention to the importance of the actions of civic rulers to morality as a whole. Think again of Genesis 9:5-6 and Romans 13. It is good news to have peace and security, and it is the nature of man to act as God’s agent in bringing that about. Thus we see with kingship the same pattern as elsewhere, grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.

_______________________________________

1. Richard Belcher, “The David Covenant,” in Covenant Theology, 173.

2. Belcher, “The Davidic Covenant,” 175.

3. Belcher, “The Davidic Covenant,” 176.

4. Belcher, “The Davidic Covenant,” 176-77.

5. Belcher, “The Davidic Covenant,” 181.

6. Belcher, “The Davidic Covenant,” 184.