2 Samuel 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

David, now settled in a cedar palace and at rest from war, tells the prophet Nathan he wants to build a house for the ark of God. That night God sends Nathan back with a different message: David will not build God a house, but God will build David a house, meaning a lasting family line. God promises that David's son will build the temple and that his kingdom and throne will be established forever, with discipline for wrongdoing but without the loss of God's steadfast love. David then sits before the LORD and prays, praising God, recalling what God did for Israel, and asking that the promise be kept.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • The king was living in his house.
   • The LORD had given the king rest on every side from all his enemies.
2. 7:2
   • The king spoke to Nathan the prophet.
   • Nathan was a prophet.
   • The king said he was living in a house of cedar.
   • The king said the ark of God was staying inside tent curtains.
3. 7:3
   • Nathan told the king to go and do all that was in his heart.
   • Nathan said the LORD was with the king.
4. 7:4
   • That night the word of the LORD came to Nathan.
5. 7:5
   • The LORD told Nathan to go and speak to David.
   • The LORD called David his servant.
   • The LORD asked whether David was the one to build him a house to dwell in.
6. 7:6
   • The LORD said he had not dwelt in a house from the day he brought the Israelites up out of Egypt until that day.
   • The LORD said he had been moving about in a tent and in a tabernacle.
7. 7:7
   • The LORD said he had moved about among all the Israelites.
   • The LORD asked whether he had ever spoken a word to any of the tribes of Israel whom he commanded to shepherd his people Israel.
   • The LORD asked whether he had ever said to them, Why have you not built me a house of cedar?
8. 7:8
   • The LORD told Nathan to say this to his servant David.
   • The message was declared to be from the LORD of hosts.
   • The LORD said he took David from the pasture, from following the flock.
   • The LORD said he took David to be ruler over his people Israel.
9. 7:9
   • The LORD said he was with David wherever David went.
   • The LORD said he cut off all David's enemies from before him.
   • The LORD said he would make David a great name (the Hebrew form leaves it ambiguous whether this is already done or still to come).
   • The LORD said David's name would be like the name of the great ones in the earth.
10. 7:10
    • The LORD said he would appoint a place for his people Israel.
    • The LORD said he would plant them.
    • The LORD said they would dwell in their own place.
    • The LORD said they would be disturbed no more.
    • The LORD said sons of wickedness would no longer afflict them as they did before.
11. 7:11
    • The LORD referred to the time since he appointed judges over his people Israel.
    • The LORD said he would give David rest from all his enemies (the Hebrew form leaves it ambiguous whether this is already done or still to come).
    • The LORD declared to David that the LORD would make David a house.
12. 7:12
    • The LORD said David's days would be fulfilled.
    • The LORD said David would sleep with his fathers.
    • The LORD said he would raise up David's seed after him.
    • The LORD said that seed would come out of David's own body.
    • The LORD said he would establish that offspring's kingdom.
13. 7:13
    • The LORD said this offspring would build a house for his name.
    • The LORD said he would establish the throne of that offspring's kingdom forever.
14. 7:14
    • The LORD said he would be a father to him.
    • The LORD said he would be a son to him.
    • The LORD said that if he committed iniquity he would chasten him with the rod of men.
    • The LORD said he would chasten him with the blows of the sons of men.
15. 7:15
    • The LORD said his steadfast love would not depart from him.
    • The LORD said he had removed his steadfast love from Saul.
    • The LORD said he had put Saul away from before David.
16. 7:16
    • The LORD said David's house and kingdom would be made sure forever before him.
    • The LORD said David's throne would be established forever.
17. 7:17
    • Nathan spoke to David according to all these words and all this vision.
18. 7:18
    • King David went in and sat before the LORD.
    • David asked who he was, addressing the Lord GOD.
    • David asked what his house was.
    • David said God had brought him this far.
19. 7:19
    • David said this had been a small thing in the Lord GOD's eyes.
    • David said God had also spoken about his servant's house for a long time to come.
    • David asked whether this was the manner of man (the Hebrew is obscure and may be a statement rather than a question).
20. 7:20
    • David asked what more he could say to God.
    • David said the Lord GOD knew his servant.
21. 7:21
    • David said God had done all this greatness for the sake of his word.
    • David said God had done it according to his own heart.
    • David said God did it to make his servant know it.
22. 7:22
    • David said the Lord GOD was great.
    • David said there was none like God.
    • David said there was no God besides him.
    • David said this was according to all they had heard with their ears.
23. 7:23
    • David asked what nation on earth was like God's people Israel.
    • David said Israel was one nation in the earth.
    • David said God went to redeem Israel as a people for himself.
    • David said God went to make himself a name.
    • David said God did great and terrible things for his land.
    • David said this was done before his people.
    • David said God redeemed his people to himself from Egypt.
    • David said this involved nations and their gods (the Hebrew here is grammatically broken and its sense uncertain).
24. 7:24
    • David said God had confirmed his people Israel to himself as a people forever.
    • David said the LORD had become their God.
25. 7:25
    • David asked the LORD God to establish forever the word he had spoken concerning his servant and his servant's house.
    • David asked God to do as he had said.
26. 7:26
    • David asked that God's name be magnified forever.
    • David said the saying would be that the LORD of hosts is God over Israel.
    • David asked that the house of his servant David be established before God.
27. 7:27
    • David said the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, had revealed it to his servant.
    • David said God had said, I will build you a house.
    • David said that for this reason his servant had found in his heart to pray this prayer to God.
28. 7:28
    • David said the Lord GOD is God.
    • David said God's words are true.
    • David said God had promised this good thing to his servant.
29. 7:29
    • David asked God to be pleased to bless the house of his servant.
    • David asked that his house continue forever before God.
    • David said the Lord GOD had spoken it.
    • David asked that with God's blessing the house of his servant be blessed forever.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

7:1

Where the King James prints LORD in capital letters, it is standing in for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants usually written Yahweh, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud, saying "the Lord" instead. Plain "Lord" translates a different, ordinary Hebrew word meaning master.

7:2

The ark of God was a chest of acacia wood plated with gold, holding the stone tablets of the law and carried on poles by priests. It was treated as the spot where God's presence met Israel, and since the days of Moses it had been kept under a tent. A "house of cedar" means a building faced with imported timber from Lebanon, costly, fragrant, resistant to rot, and the standard mark of a royal residence in that world.

7:5

The Hebrew puts the weight on the word "you": "Are you the one to build me a house?" It is a question, not a flat refusal. The later retelling of this scene in 1 Chronicles 17:4 makes it a plain negative, and readers have long disagreed over whether the question here is a no or a redirection to someone else.

7:6

The King James uses two words, "tent" and "tabernacle," for the same thing: the portable shrine Israel carried through the wilderness, a curtained wooden frame taken down and set up again at each stopping place. It had no fixed site.

7:7

"Feed my people" translates a verb meaning to shepherd; across the ancient Near East, shepherding was the ordinary image for governing, and kings were routinely called shepherds of their people. Also note that the Hebrew here says "tribes of Israel," while the parallel passage in 1 Chronicles 17:6 reads "judges of Israel." The two words look very similar in Hebrew, and translators divide over which was originally meant.

7:8

"LORD of hosts" means the Lord of armies. The title pictures God at the head of massed forces (Israel's fighting men in some passages, heavenly armies in others) and was especially at home in war and in the worship connected with the ark.

7:9

A great "name" means people everywhere know who you are. They talk about you with honor.

7:10

Planting people like a tree is a word picture. A tree stays in one place and grows deep roots.

7:11

This chapter turns on a pun the English cannot carry: one Hebrew word means all three of palace (verse 1), temple (verse 5), and dynasty, an unbroken line of ruling descendants, as here. David offers to build God a house of the second kind; God answers by promising David a house of the third. The judges were the military and legal leaders who held Israel together in the generations between Joshua and the first king; their stories make up the book of Judges.

7:12

"Sleep with thy fathers" is a fixed idiom for dying and being laid in the ancestral tomb; it says nothing about the state of the dead. "Proceed out of thy bowels" is old English for coming out of a man's own body, the successor will be David's biological son, not an adopted heir or a distant relative.

7:13

To build a house "for my name" is ownership language: the name of the owner was attached to a building to mark whose it was and who could be met there. In Hebrew usage a person's name often stands in for the person.

7:14

"I will be his father, and he shall be my son" is formal legal wording, used in the ancient Near East both for adopting a child and for declaring the special standing of a king before his god. It states a relationship and its obligations, not a claim about parentage. "The rod of men" and "the stripes of the children of men" mean discipline delivered by ordinary human means (through people and events, the way any father or overlord would punish), rather than by some extraordinary act.

7:15

"Mercy" here translates the Hebrew word hesed, the steady loyalty owed inside a binding relationship. It is nearer to faithfulness or committed devotion than to pity. The reference to Saul points back to 1 Samuel 15–16, where the kingship is withdrawn from Saul and given to David.

7:16

The standard Hebrew text reads "before you," which would mean David sees his house secured; a number of manuscripts, the ancient Greek translation, and the parallel in 1 Chronicles 17:14 read "before me." The rendering follows the second reading, but the difference is a single letter and remains disputed.

7:17

A vision was a message God showed a prophet, often as pictures or words during the night.

7:18

"Lord GOD," with GOD in capitals, renders a Hebrew pair: "my Lord" followed by the divine name. To sit "before the LORD" means David went into the tent where the ark stood. Sitting was an unusual posture for prayer, which was normally offered standing, kneeling, or face down.

7:19

The closing sentence is one of the most obscure in the Hebrew Bible. Word for word it runs "and this is the law of the man." It has been taken as a question ("is this how you deal with a human being?"), as a statement ("this is instruction for humanity"), and as a text damaged in copying; the parallel in 1 Chronicles 17:17 reads differently again. No translation of it is certain.

7:22

"Beside" in 1611 English means besides, that is, other than or apart from. The sentence says there is no God except this one; it is not saying that no God stands next to him.

7:23

"Redeem" means to buy back. In Israelite law it was a family duty: paying the price to recover a relative sold into slavery, or land lost through debt. Applied to the exodus from Egypt, it casts Israel as property bought back by its rightful owner. The Hebrew of this verse is unusually rough (it slides between "you" and "them," and the verb attached to "God went" is plural), so translations differ considerably in how they smooth it out.

7:26

"Magnified" means made great and treated as great, not made to look bigger through glass.

7:27

"Revealed" is literally "uncovered the ear of your servant," a Hebrew idiom for telling someone something directly and privately, the way you would pull back a headcloth to speak into a person's ear.

7:29

"My family" means David's children, and their children after them.