2 Samuel 7:12-13

7:12 When the time comes for you to die, ¹  I will raise up your descendant, one of your own sons, to succeed you, ²  and I will establish his kingdom. 7:13 He will build a house for my name, and I will make his dynasty permanent. ³ 

2 Samuel 7:1

The Lord Establishes a Covenant with David

7:1 The king settled into his palace, ⁴  for the Lord gave him relief ⁵  from all his enemies on all sides. ⁶ 

2 Samuel 17:12

17:12 We will come against him wherever he happens to be found. We will descend on him like the dew falls on the ground. Neither he nor any of the men who are with him will be spared alive – not one of them!

2 Samuel 22:10

22:10 He made the sky sink ⁷  as he descended;

a thick cloud was under his feet.

2 Samuel 1:6

1:6 The young man who was telling him this ⁸  said, “I just happened to be on Mount Gilboa and came across Saul leaning on his spear for support. The chariots and leaders of the horsemen were in hot pursuit of him.

2 Samuel 1:10

1:10 So I stood over him and put him to death, since I knew that he couldn’t live in such a condition. ⁹  Then I took the crown which was on his head and the ¹⁰  bracelet which was on his arm. I have brought them here to my lord.” ¹¹ 

Zechariah 6:12-13

6:12 Then say to him, ‘The Lord who rules over all says, “Look – here is the man whose name is Branch, ¹²  who will sprout up from his place and build the temple of the Lord. 6:13 Indeed, he will build the temple of the Lord, and he will be clothed in splendor, sitting as king on his throne. Moreover, there will be a priest ¹³  with him on his throne and they will see eye to eye on everything.

¹ tn Heb, “when your days are full and you lie down with your ancestors.”

² tn Heb “your seed after you who comes out from your insides.”

³ tn Heb “and I will establish the throne of his kingdom permanently.”

⁴ tn Heb “house” (also in the following verse).

⁵ tn Or “rest.”

⁶ tn The translation understands the disjunctive clause in v. 1b as circumstantial-causal.

⁷ tn The verb נָטָה (natah) can carry the sense “[to cause to] bend; [to cause to] bow down” (see HALOT 693 s.v. נָטָה). For example, Gen 49:15 pictures Issachar as a donkey that “bends” its shoulder or back under a burden (cf. KJV, NASB, NRSV “He bowed the heavens”; NAB “He inclined the heavens”). Here the Lord causes the sky, pictured as a dome or vault, to bend or sink down as he descends in the storm.

⁸ tc The Syriac Peshitta and one ms of the LXX lack the words “who was telling him this” of the MT.

⁹ tn Heb “after his falling”; NAB “could not survive his wound”; CEV “was too badly wounded to live much longer.”

¹⁰ tc The MT lacks the definite article, but this is likely due to textual corruption. It is preferable to read the alef (א) of אֶצְעָדָה (’ets’adah) as a ה (he) giving הַצְּעָדָה (hatsÿ’adah). There is no reason to think that the soldier confiscated from Saul’s dead body only one of two or more bracelets that he was wearing (cf. NLT “one of his bracelets”).

¹¹ sn The claims that the soldier is making here seem to contradict the story of Saul’s death as presented in 1 Sam 31:3-5. In that passage it appears that Saul took his own life, not that he was slain by a passerby who happened on the scene. Some scholars account for the discrepancy by supposing that conflicting accounts have been brought together in the MT. However, it is likely that the young man is here fabricating the account in a self-serving way so as to gain favor with David, or so he supposes. He probably had come across Saul’s corpse, stolen the crown and bracelet from the body, and now hopes to curry favor with David by handing over to him these emblems of Saul’s royalty. But in so doing the Amalekite greatly miscalculated David’s response to this alleged participation in Saul’s death. The consequence of his lies will instead be his own death.

¹² tn The epithet “Branch” (צֶמַח, tsemakh) derives from the verb used here (יִצְמָח, yitsmakh, “will sprout up”) to describe the rise of the Messiah, already referred to in this manner in Zech 3:8 (cf. Isa 11:1; 53:2; Jer 33:15). In the immediate context this refers to Zerubbabel, but the ultimate referent is Jesus (cf. John 19:5).

¹³ sn The priest here in the immediate context is Joshua but the fuller and more distant allusion is to the Messiah, a ruling priest. The notion of the ruler as a priest-king was already apparent in David and his successors (Pss 2:2, 6-8; 110:2, 4), and it finds mature expression in David’s greater Son, Jesus Christ, who will combine both offices in his kingship (Heb 5:1-10; 7:1-25).