2 Samuel 7:14

7:14 I will become his father and he will become my son. When he sins, I will correct him with the rod of men and with wounds inflicted by human beings.

2 Samuel 7:1

The Lord Establishes a Covenant with David

7:1 The king settled into his palace, ¹  for the Lord gave him relief ²  from all his enemies on all sides. ³ 

2 Samuel 17:13

17:13 If he regroups in a city, all Israel will take up ropes to that city and drag it down to the valley, so that not a single pebble will be left there!”

2 Samuel 22:10

22:10 He made the sky sink ⁴  as he descended;

a thick cloud was under his feet.

2 Samuel 1:6

1:6 The young man who was telling him this ⁵  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.

Psalms 89:26-27

89:26 He will call out to me,

‘You are my father, ⁶  my God, and the protector who delivers me.’ ⁷ 

89:27 I will appoint him to be my firstborn son, ⁸ 

the most exalted of the earth’s kings.

¹ tn Heb “house” (also in the following verse).

² tn Or “rest.”

³ tn The translation understands the disjunctive clause in v. 1b as circumstantial-causal.

⁴ 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.

⁵ tc The Syriac Peshitta and one ms of the LXX lack the words “who was telling him this” of the MT.

⁶ sn You are my father. The Davidic king was viewed as God’s “son” (see 2 Sam 7:14; Ps 2:7). The idiom reflects ancient Near Eastern adoption language associated with covenants of grant, by which a lord would reward a faithful subject by elevating him to special status, referred to as “sonship.” Like a son, the faithful subject received an “inheritance,” viewed as an unconditional, eternal gift. Such gifts usually took the form of land and/or an enduring dynasty. See M. Weinfeld, “The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East,” JAOS 90 (1970): 184-203, for general discussion and some striking extra-biblical parallels.

⁷ tn Heb “the rocky summit of my deliverance.”

⁸ sn The firstborn son typically had special status and received special privileges.