2 Samuel 7:1-17

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  7:2 The king said to Nathan the prophet, “Look! I am living in a palace made from cedar, while the ark of God sits in the middle of a tent.” 7:3 Nathan replied to the king, “You should go ⁴  and do whatever you have in mind, ⁵  for the Lord is with you.” 7:4 That night the Lord told Nathan, ⁶  7:5 “Go, tell my servant David: ‘This is what the Lord says: Do you really intend to build a house for me to live in? 7:6 I have not lived in a house from the time I brought the Israelites up from Egypt to the present day. Instead, I was traveling with them and living in a tent. ⁷  7:7 Wherever I moved among all the Israelites, I did not say ⁸  to any of the leaders ⁹  whom I appointed to care for ¹⁰  my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house made from cedar?”’

7:8 “So now, say this to my servant David: ‘This is what the Lord of hosts says: I took you from the pasture and from your work as a shepherd ¹¹  to make you leader of my people Israel. 7:9 I was with you wherever you went, and I defeated ¹²  all your enemies before you. Now I will make you as famous as the great men of the earth. ¹³  7:10 I will establish a place for my people Israel and settle ¹⁴  them there; they will live there and not be disturbed ¹⁵  any more. Violent men ¹⁶  will not oppress them again, as they did in the beginning 7:11 and during the time when I appointed judges to lead my people Israel. Instead, I will give you relief ¹⁷  from all your enemies. The Lord declares ¹⁸  to you that he himself ¹⁹  will build a dynastic house ²⁰  for you. 7:12 When the time comes for you to die, ²¹  I will raise up your descendant, one of your own sons, to succeed you, ²²  and I will establish his kingdom. 7:13 He will build a house for my name, and I will make his dynasty permanent. ²³  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. 7:15 But my loyal love will not be removed from him as I removed it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. 7:16 Your house and your kingdom will stand before me ²⁴  permanently; your dynasty ²⁵  will be permanent.’” 7:17 Nathan told David all these words that were revealed to him. ²⁶ 

2 Samuel 7:2

7:2 The king said to Nathan the prophet, “Look! I am living in a palace made from cedar, while the ark of God sits in the middle of a tent.”

2 Samuel 6:7-9

6:7 The Lord was so furious with Uzzah, ²⁷  he ²⁸  killed him on the spot ²⁹  for his negligence. ³⁰  He died right there beside the ark of God.

6:8 David was angry because the Lord attacked ³¹  Uzzah; so he called that place Perez Uzzah, ³²  which remains its name to this very day. 6:9 David was afraid of the Lord that day and said, “How will the ark of the Lord ever come to me?”

Daniel 4:4

Nebuchadnezzar Dreams of a Tree Chopped Down

4:4 (4:1) ³³  I, Nebuchadnezzar, was relaxing in my home, ³⁴  living luxuriously ³⁵  in my palace.

Daniel 4:29-30

4:29 After twelve months, he happened to be walking around on the battlements ³⁶  of the royal palace of Babylon. 4:30 The king uttered these words: “Is this not the great Babylon that I have built for a royal residence ³⁷  by my own mighty strength ³⁸  and for my majestic honor?”

[7:1]  ¹ tn Heb “house” (also in the following verse).

[7:1]  ² tn Or “rest.”

[7:1]  ³ tn The translation understands the disjunctive clause in v. 1b as circumstantial-causal.

[7:3]  ⁴ tc Several medieval Hebrew mss and the Syriac Peshitta lack this word.

[7:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “all that is in your heart.”

[7:4]  ⁶ tn Heb “the word of the Lord was [i.e., came] to Nathan.”

[7:6]  ⁷ tn Heb “in a tent and in a dwelling.” The expression is a hendiadys, using two terms to express one idea.

[7:7]  ⁸ tn Heb “Did I speak a word?” In the Hebrew text the statement is phrased as a rhetorical question.

[7:7]  ⁹ tn Heb “tribes” (so KJV, NASB, NCV), but the parallel passage in 1 Chr 17:6 has “judges.”

[7:7]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “whom I commanded to shepherd” (so NIV, NRSV).

[7:8]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and from after the sheep.”

[7:9]  ¹² tn Heb “cut off.”

[7:9]  ¹³ tn Heb “and I will make for you a great name like the name of the great ones who are in the earth.”

[7:10]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “plant.”

[7:10]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “shaken.”

[7:10]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “the sons of violence.”

[7:11]  ¹⁷ tn Or “rest.”

[7:11]  ¹⁸ tn In the Hebrew text the verb is apparently perfect with vav consecutive, which would normally suggest a future sense (“he will declare”; so the LXX, ἀπαγγελεῖ [apangelei]). But the context seems instead to call for a present or past nuance (“he declares” or “he has declared”). The synoptic passage in 1 Chr 17:10 has וָאַגִּד (va’aggid, “and I declared”). The construction used in 2 Sam 7:11 highlights this important statement.

[7:11]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “the Lord.”

[7:11]  ²⁰ tn Heb “house,” but used here in a metaphorical sense, referring to a royal dynasty. Here the Lord’s use of the word plays off the literal sense that David had in mind as he contemplated building a temple for the Lord. To reflect this in the English translation the adjective “dynastic” has been supplied.

[7:12]  ²¹ tn Heb, “when your days are full and you lie down with your ancestors.”

[7:12]  ²² tn Heb “your seed after you who comes out from your insides.”

[7:13]  ²³ tn Heb “and I will establish the throne of his kingdom permanently.”

[7:16]  ²⁴ tc Heb “before you.” A few medieval Hebrew mss read instead “before me,” which makes better sense contextually. (See also the LXX and the Syriac Peshitta.) The MT reading is probably the result of dittography (note the כ [kaf] at the beginning of the next form), with the extra כ then being interpreted as a pronominal suffix.

[7:16]  ²⁵ tn Heb “throne.”

[7:17]  ²⁶ tn Heb “according to all these words and according to all this revelation, so Nathan said to David.”

[6:7]  ²⁷ tn Heb “and the anger of the Lord burned against Uzzah.”

[6:7]  ²⁸ tn Heb “God.”

[6:7]  ²⁹ tc Heb “there.” Since this same term occurs later in the verse it is translated “on the spot” here for stylistic reasons.

[6:7]  ³⁰ tc The phrase “his negligence” is absent from the LXX.

[6:8]  ³¹ tn Heb “because the Lord broke out [with] a breaking out [i.e., an outburst] against Uzzah.”

[6:8]  ³² sn The name Perez Uzzah means in Hebrew “the outburst [against] Uzzah.”

[4:4]  ³³ sn This verse marks the beginning of chap. 4 in the Aramaic text of Daniel (see the note on 4:1). The Greek OT (LXX) has the following addition: “In the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign he said.” This date would suggest a link to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. In general, the LXX of chapters 4-6 is very different from the MT, so much so that the following notes will call attention only to selected readings. In Daniel 4 the LXX lacks sizable portions of material in the MT (e.g., vv. 3-6, 31-32), includes sizable portions of material not in the MT (e.g., v. 14a, parts of vv. 16, 28), has a different order of some material (e.g., v. 8 after v. 9), and in some instances is vastly different from the MT (e.g., vv. 30, 34). Whether these differences are due to an excessively paraphrastic translation technique adopted for these chapters in the LXX, or are due to differences in the underlying Vorlage of the LXX, is a disputed matter. The latter seems more likely. There is a growing trend in modern scholarship to take the LXX of chapters 4-6 much more seriously than was the case in most earlier text-critical studies that considered this issue.

[4:4]  ³⁴ tn Aram “my house.”

[4:4]  ³⁵ tn Aram “happy.”

[4:29]  ³⁶ tn The word “battlements” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied from context. Many English versions supply “roof” here (e.g., NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV); cf. NLT “on the flat roof.”

[4:30]  ³⁷ tn Aram “house.”

[4:30]  ³⁸ tn Aram “by the might of my strength.”