“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, to be ruler over My people Israel. I have been with you wherever you have gone and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make you a great name, like the names of the great men who are on the earth”‘” (2 Sam 7:8-9).
In the previous passage in 2 Samuel (2 Samuel 6), the author connects the dots between God’s promises to the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) with David by portraying David as a “new Isaac” (compare 2 Sam 6:16, 21, 23 with Gen 26:8, 16). In the immediately following chapter (2 Samuel 7), God explicitly reiterates to David the words of his promise to Abraham and Isaac. When God tells David, “I have been with you” (2 Sam 7:9), he repeats word for word the same thing he said to Isaac when he promised to give him the land he swore to give his father: “Sojourn in this land and I WILL BE WITH YOU and bless you, for to you and your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham” (Gen 26:3).
When God promises “to make David’s name great” (2 Sam 7:9), he is reiterating a promise he has only made to one other person in the Hebrew Bible (i.e., Abraham): “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and MAKE YOUR NAME GREAT, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:2-3).
So what? This inner-biblical connection between God’s promises to the Patriarchs in Genesis 12ff. with the seed of David in 2 Samuel 7 is crucial for affirming and defending the faith of the New Testament. Many people either accuse the Apostle Paul of ramrodding the New Testament faith onto the pages of the Hebrew Bible or assume Paul sees added inspired meaning (sensus plenior/fuller meaning) when he interprets the promises to the Patriarchs concerning the Messiah: “Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and his seed. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as referring to many, but rather to one, ‘And to your seed,’ that is, Christ” (Gal 3:16). But if this is the case, we can also accuse the author of Samuel of ramrodding the Davidic Covenant back onto God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Far too often, people assume the NT authors read the OT backwards, i.e., they imposed Christological meanings on passages in the OT that were not intended to be Messianic by the original OT authors. But once we see this inner-biblical connection between God’s promises to David and those to Abraham, we become aware of Paul’s incredible exegetical sensitivity. And the more closely I follow the OT’s use of the OT, the more I see how right the NT’s authors were about the meaning of the OT!
And if you don’t believe me, then take up the challenge of becoming a Berean.
“The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so” (Acts 17:10-11).
