2 Samuel 7:18

DAVID'S PRAYER OF GRATITUDE TO GOD

"Then King David went in and sat before the Lord, and said, "Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that thou hast brought me thus far? And yet this was a small thing in thy eyes, O Lord God; thou hast spoken also of thy servant's house for a great while to come, and hast shown me future generations, O Lord God. And what more can David say to thee? For thou knowest thy servant, O Lord God! Because of thy promise, and according to thine own heart, thou hast wrought all this greatness to make thy servant know it. Therefore thou art great, O Lord God; for there is none like thee, and there is no God besides thee, according to all that we have heard with our ears. What other nation on earth is like thy people Israel, whom God went to redeem to be his people, making himself a name, and doing for them great and terrible things, by driving out before his people a nation and its gods? And thou didst establish for thyself thy people Israel to be thy people forever; and thou, O Lord, didst become their God. And now, O Lord God, confirm forever the word which thou hast spoken concerning thy servant and concerning his house, and do as thou hast spoken; and thy name will be magnified forever, saying, `The Lord of Hosts is God over Israel,' and the house of thy servant David will be established before thee. For thou, O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, hast made this revelation to thy servant David, saying, `I will build you a house'; therefore thy servant has found courage to pray this prayer to thee. And now, O Lord God, thou art God, and thy words are true, and thou hast promised this good thing to thy servant; now therefore may it please thee to bless the house of thy servant, that it may continue forever before thee; for thou, O Lord God, hast spoken, and with thy blessing shall the house of thy servant be blessed forever."

This remarkable prayer has a number of very interesting features.

"David went in and sat before the Lord" (2 Samuel 7:18). This is an unusual posture for prayer; and a number of scholars interpret it to mean that he knelt down and leaned back on his heels, looking upward, similar to what Moslems do today.

"O Lord God" (2 Samuel 7:19,20,22,24,25,28,29). Two different words for God are used in these verses, as well as several other names such as "Lord of Hosts," and "God of Israel," another example among hundreds of others that multiple names for God never meant either "various sources" or multiple authors.

"Thou hast shown me future generations" (2 Samuel 7:19). It was indeed many generations later when Jeconiah, the last of David's earthly house to sit on his throne, lived out his days in Babylon.

"Driving out before his people a nation and its gods" (2 Samuel 7:23). This word in David's prayer indicates his understanding of why God had replaced the Canaanites with Israel. It was all because of the idolatry of the Canaanites.

"Thou didst establish for thyself thy people Israel to be thy people forever" (2 Samuel 7:24). There is hardly any way that David could have understood that such a truth as this had no reference whatever to any mere race of people; but that God's Israel in future times would be defined solely and exclusively as the servants and followers of that Greater Son of David, not any of Israel's wicked monarchs, but the Christ of Glory.

"May it please thee that the house of thy servant may continue forever before thee" (2 Samuel 7:29). There can be little doubt that David's prayer here was a plea upon behalf of his physical posterity, but God's answer of such a prayer uttered by a faithful and loving parent must always depend to a great extent upon the descendants of such a parent. When the physical descendants of David became wicked and reprobate, they, along with all of the apostate nation, were displaced and punished by their exile in Babylon. However, there were two very significant ways in which God answered this prayer.

(1) The descendants of David were indeed continued upon the earth "before the Lord" until, in the fullness of time, the terminal heir to David's throne, namely, Joseph the son of Jacob, was able to pass it on to Christ the Messiah, who was the legal heir of Joseph, but not his literal son (Matthew 1:16).

(2) The other way consisted in the continuity of David's personal descendants through his son Nathan, until Jesus Christ was born miraculously of the Virgin Mary (whose husband Joseph was the son-in-law of Heli, Mary's father. See Luke 3:23) the daughter of Heli, directly descended from David through Nathan. Thus in this manner, David's house was continued "forever" before the Lord, especially in consequence of the fact that Christ himself and the total of that Israel (of all races and kindreds of men) which constitutes his "spiritual body" are also reckoned in the "house of David" (Matthew 1:1).