Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - 2 Samuel 23:1 - 23:1

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - 2 Samuel 23:1 - 23:1


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The psalm of thanksgiving, in which David praised the Lord for all the deliverances and benefits that he had experienced throughout the whole of his life, is followed by the prophetic will and testament of the great king, unfolding the importance of his rule in relation to the sacred history of the future. And whilst the psalm may be regarded (2 Samuel 22) as a great hallelujah, with which David passed away from the stage of life, these “last words” contain the divine seal of all that he has sung and prophesied in several psalms concerning the eternal dominion of his seed, on the strength of the divine promise which he received through the prophet Nathan, that his throne should be established for ever (2 Samuel 7). These words are not merely a lyrical expansion of that promise, but a prophetic declaration uttered by David at the close of his life and by divine inspiration, concerning the true King of the kingdom of God. “The aged monarch, who was not generally endowed with the gift of prophecy, was moved by the Spirit of God at the close of his life, and beheld a just Ruler in the fear of God, under whose reign blessing and salvation sprang up for the righteous, and all the wicked were overcome. The pledge of this was the eternal covenant which God had concluded with him” (Tholuck: die Propheten and ihre Weissagungen, p. 166). The heading “these are the last words of David” serves to attach it to the preceding psalm of thanksgiving.

2Sa 23:1-2

1 Divine saying of David the son of Jesse,

Divine saying of the man, the highly exalted,

Of the anointed of the God of Jacob,

And of the lovely one in the songs of praise of Israel.

2 The Spirit of Jehovah speaks through me,

And His word is upon my tongue.

This introduction to the prophetic announcement rests, both as to form and substance, upon the last sayings of Balaam concerning the future history of Israel (Num 24:3, Num 24:15). This not only shows to what extent David had occupied himself with the utterances of the earlier men of God concerning Israel's future; but indicates, at the same time, that his own prophetic utterance was intended to be a further expansion of Balaam's prophecy concerning the Star out of Jacob and the Sceptre out of Israel. Like Balaam, he calls his prophecy a נָאֻם, i.e., a divine saying or oracle, as a revelation which he had received directly from God (see at Num 24:3). But the recipient of this revelation was not, like Balaam the son of Beor, a man with closed eye, whose eyes had been opened by a vision of the Almighty, but “the man who was raised up on high” (עָל, adverbially “above,” is, strictly speaking, a substantive, “height,” used in an adverbial sense, as in Hos 11:7, and probably also 2Sa 7:16), i.e., whom God had lifted up out of humiliation to be the ruler of His people, yea, even to be the head of the nations (2Sa 22:44). Luther's rendering, “who is assured of the Messiah of the God of Jacob,” is based upon the Vulgate, “cui constitutum est de Christo Dei Jacob,” and cannot be grammatically sustained. David was exalted on the one hand as “the anointed of the God of Jacob,” i.e., as the one whom the God of Israel had anointed king over His people, and on the other hand as “the lovely one in Israel's songs of praise,” i.e., the man whom God had enabled to sing lovely songs of praise in celebration of His grace and glory. זְמִיר = זִמְרָה does not mean a song generally, but a song of praise in honour of God (see at Exo 15:2), like מִזְמֹור in the headings to the psalms. As David on the one hand had firmly established the kingdom of God in an earthly and political respect as the anointed of Jehovah, i.e., as king, so had he on the other, as the composer of Israel's songs of praise, promoted the spiritual edification of that kingdom. The idea of נְאֻם is explained in 2Sa 23:2. The Spirit of Jehovah speaks through him; his words are the inspiration of God. The preterite דִּבֶּר relates to the divine inspiration which preceded the utterance of the divine saying. בְּ דִּבֶּר, literally to speak into a person, as in Hos 1:2. The saying itself commences with 2Sa 23:3.

2Sa 22:3

3 The God of Israel saith,

The Rock of Israel speaketh to me:

A Ruler over men, just,

A Ruler in the fear of God.

4 And as light of the morning, when the sun rises,

As morning without clouds:

From shining out of rain (springeth) green out of the earth.

5 For is not my house thus with God?

For He hath made me an everlasting covenant,

Provided with all, and attested;

For all my salvation and all good pleasure,

Should He then not cause it to grow?

As the prophets generally preface their saying with “thus saith the Lord,” so David commences his prophetic saying with “the God of Israel saith,” for the purpose of describing it most emphatically as the word of God. He designates God “the God” and “The Rock” (as in 2Sa 22:3) of Israel, to indicate that the contents of his prophecy relate to the salvation of the people of Israel, and are guaranteed by the unchangeableness of God. The saying which follows bears the impress of a divine oracle even in its enigmatical brevity. The verbs are wanting in the different sentences of 2Sa 23:3 and 2Sa 23:4. “A ruler over men,” sc., “will arise,” or there will be. בָּאָדָם does not mean “among men,” but “over men;” for בְּ is to be taken as with the verb מָשַׁל, as denoting the object ruled over (cf. Gen 3:16; Gen 4:7, etc.). הָאָדֶם does not mean certain men, but the human race, humanity. This ruler is “just” in the fullest sense of the word, as in the passages founded upon this, viz., Jer 23:5; Zec 9:9, and Psa 72:2. The justice of the ruler is founded in his “fear of God.” אֱלֹהִים יִרְאַת is governed freely by מֹושֵׁל. (On the fact itself, see Isa 11:2-3.) The meaning is, “A ruler over the human race will arise, a just ruler, and will exercise his dominion in the spirit of the fear of God.”

2Sa 23:4

2Sa 23:4 describes the blessing that will proceed from this ruler. The idea that 2Sa 23:4 should be connected with 2Sa 23:3 so as to form one period, in the sense of “when one rules justly over men (as I do), it is as when a morning becomes clear,” must be rejected, for the simple reason that it overlooks Nathan's promise (2 Samuel 7) altogether, and weakens the force of the saying so solemnly introduced as the word of God. The ruler over men whom David sees in spirit, is not any one who rules righteously over men; nor is the seed of David to be regarded as a collective expression indicating a merely ideal personality, but, according to the Chaldee rendering, the Messiah himself, the righteous Shoot whom the Lord would raise up to David (Jer 23:5), and who would execute righteousness and judgment upon earth (Jer 33:15). 2Sa 23:4 is to be taken by itself as containing an independent thought, and the connection between it and 2Sa 23:3 must be gathered from the words themselves: the appearance (the rise) of this Ruler will be “as light of the morning, when the sun rises.” At the same time, the Messiah is not to be regarded as the subject to בֹּקֶר אֹור (the light of the morning), as though the ruler over men were compared with the morning light; but the subject compared to the morning light is intentionally left indefinite, according to the view adopted by Luther in his exposition, “In the time of the Messiah it will be like the light of the morning.” We are precluded from regarding the Messiah as the subject, by the fact that the comparison is instituted not with the sun, but with the morning dawn at the rising of the sun, whose vivifying effects upon nature are described in the second clause of the verse. The words שֶׁמֶשׁ יִזְרַח are to be taken relatively, as a more distinct definition of the morning light. The clause which follows, “morning without clouds,” is parallel to the foregoing, and describes more fully the nature of the morning. The light of the rising sun on a cloudless morning is an image of the coming salvation. The rising sun awakens the germs of life in the bosom of nature, which had been slumbering through the darkness of the night. “The state of things before the coming of the ruler resembles the darkness of the night” (Hengstenberg). The verb is also wanting in the second hemistich. “From the shining from rain (is, comes) fresh green out of the earth.” נֹגַהּ signifies the brightness of the rising sun; but, so far as the actual meaning is concerned, it relates to the salvation which attends the coming of the righteous ruler. מִמָּטָר is either subordinate to מִנֹּגַהּ, or co-ordinate with it. In the former case, we should have to render the passage, “from the shining of the sun which proceeds out of rain,” or “from the shining after rain;” and the allusion would be to a cloudless morning, when the shining of the sun after a night's rain stimulates the growth of the plants. In the latter case, we should have to render it “from the shining (and) from the rain;” and the reference would be to a cloudless morning, on which the vegetation springs up from the ground through sunshine followed by rain. Grammatically considered, the first view (? the second) is the easier of the two; nevertheless we regard the other (? the first) as the only admissible one, inasmuch as rain is not to be expected when the sun has risen with a cloudless sky. The rays of the sun, as it rises after a night of rain, strengthen the fresh green of the plants. The rain is therefore a figurative representation of blessing generally (cf. Isa 44:3), and the green grass which springs up from the earth after the rain is an image of the blessings of the Messianic salvation (Isa 44:4; Isa 45:8).

In Psa 72:6, Solomon takes these words of David as the basis of his comparison of the effects resulting from the government of the true Prince of peace to the coming down of the rain upon the mown grass.

2Sa 23:5

In 2Sa 23:5, the prophecy concerning the coming of the just ruler is sustained by being raced back to the original promise in 2 Samuel 7, in which David had received a pledge of this. The first and last clauses of this verse can only be made to yield a meaning in harmony with the context, by being taken interrogatively: “for is not my house so with God?” The question is only indicated by the tone (לֹא כִּי = הֲלֹא כִּי: 2Sa 19:23), as is frequently the case, even before clauses commencing with לֹּא (e.g., Hos 11:5; Mal 2:15 : cf. Ewald, §324, a.). לֹא־כֶן (not so) is explained by the following clause, though the כִּי which follows is not to be taken in the sense of “that.” Each of the two clauses contains a distinct thought. That of the first is, “Does not my house stand in such a relation to God, that the righteous ruler will spring from it?” This is then explained in the second: “for He hath made an everlasting covenant with me.” David calls the promise in 2Sa 7:12., that God would establish his kingdom to his seed for ever, a covenant, because it involved a reciprocal relation-namely, that Jehovah would first of all found for David a permanent house, and then that the seed of David was to build the house of the Lord. This covenant is בַכֹּל עֲרוּכָה, “equipped (or provided) with all” that could help to establish it. This relates more especially to the fact that all eventualities were foreseen, even the falling away of the bearers of the covenant of God, so that such an event as this would not annul the covenant (2Sa 7:14-15). וּשְׁמוּרָה, “and preserved,” i.e., established by the assurance that even in that case the Lord would not withdraw His grace. David could found upon this the certainty, that God would cause all the salvation to spring forth which had been pledged to his house in the promise referred to. כָּל־יִשְׁעִי, “all my salvation,” i.e., all the salvation promised to me and to my house. כָּל־חֵפֶץ, not “all my desire,” but “all the good pleasure” of God, i.e., all the saving counsel of God expressed in that covenant. The כִּי before לֹא is an energetic repetition of the כִּי which introduces the explanatory thought, in the sense of a firm assurance: “for all my salvation and all good pleasure, yea, should He not cause it to spring forth?”

2Sa 23:6-7

6 But the worthless, as rejected thorns are they all;

For men do not take them in the hand.

7 And the man who touches them

Provides himself with iron and spear-shaft,

And they are utterly burned with fire where they dwell.

The development of salvation under the ruler in righteousness and the fear of God is accompanied by judgment upon the ungodly. The abstract בְלִיַּעַל, worthlessness, is stronger than בְלִיַּעַל אִישׁ, the worthless man, and depicts the godless as personified worthlessness. מֻנָד, in the Keri מֻנָּד, the Hophal of נוּד or נָדַד, literally “scared” or hunted away. This epithet does not apply to the thorns, so well as to the ungodly who are compared to thorns. The reference is to thorns that men root out, not to those which they avoid on account of their prickles. כֻּלָּהַם, an antiquated form for כֻּלָּם (see Ewald, §247, d.). To root them out, or clean the ground of them, men do not lay hold of them with the bare hand; but “whoever would touch them equips himself (יִמָּלֵא, sc., יָדֹו, to 'fill the hand' with anything: 2Ki 9:24) with iron, i.e., with iron weapons, and spear-shaft” (vid., 1Sa 17:7). This expression also relates to the godless rather than to the thorns. They are consumed בַּשֶּׁבֶת, “at the dwelling,” i.e., as Kimchi explains, at the place of their dwelling, the place where they grow. For בַּשֶּׁבֶת cannot mean “on the spot” in the sense of without delay. The burning of the thorns takes place at the final judgment upon the ungodly (Mat 13:30).