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.

Psalms 89:26-37

89:26 He will call out to me,

‘You are my father, ¹  my God, and the protector who delivers me.’ ² 

89:27 I will appoint him to be my firstborn son, ³ 

the most exalted of the earth’s kings.

89:28 I will always extend my loyal love to him,

and my covenant with him is secure. ⁴ 

89:29 I will give him an eternal dynasty, ⁵ 

and make his throne as enduring as the skies above. ⁶ 

89:30 If his sons reject my law

and disobey my regulations,

89:31 if they break ⁷  my rules

and do not keep my commandments,

89:32 I will punish their rebellion by beating them with a club, ⁸ 

their sin by inflicting them with bruises. ⁹ 

89:33 But I will not remove ¹⁰  my loyal love from him,

nor be unfaithful to my promise. ¹¹ 

89:34 I will not break ¹²  my covenant

or go back on what I promised. ¹³ 

89:35 Once and for all I have vowed by my own holiness,

I will never deceive ¹⁴  David.

89:36 His dynasty will last forever. ¹⁵ 

His throne will endure before me, like the sun, ¹⁶ 

89:37 it will remain stable, like the moon, ¹⁷ 

his throne will endure like the skies.” ¹⁸  (Selah)

Isaiah 55:3

55:3 Pay attention and come to me!

Listen, so you can live! ¹⁹ 

Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to ²⁰  you,

just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David. ²¹ 

Hebrews 1:5

The Son Is Superior to Angels

1:5 For to which of the angels did God ²²  ever say, “You are my son! Today I have fathered you”? ²³  And in another place ²⁴  he says, ²⁵  “I will be his father and he will be my son.” ²⁶ 

[89:26]  ¹ 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.

[89:26]  ² tn Heb “the rocky summit of my deliverance.”

[89:27]  ³ sn The firstborn son typically had special status and received special privileges.

[89:28]  ⁴ tn Heb “forever I will keep for him my loyal love and will make my covenant secure for him.”

[89:29]  ⁵ tn Heb “and I will set in place forever his offspring.”

[89:29]  ⁶ tn Heb “and his throne like the days of the heavens.”

[89:31]  ⁷ tn Or “desecrate.”

[89:32]  ⁸ tn Heb “I will punish with a club their rebellion.”

[89:32]  ⁹ tn Heb “with blows their sin.”

[89:33]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “break”; “make ineffectual.” Some prefer to emend אָפִיר (’afir; the Hiphil of פָּרַר, parar, “to break”) to אָסִיר (’asir; the Hiphil of סוּר, sur, “to turn aside”), a verb that appears in 2 Sam 7:15.

[89:33]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and I will not deal falsely with my faithfulness.”

[89:34]  ¹² tn Or “desecrate.”

[89:34]  ¹³ tn Heb “and what proceeds out of my lips I will not alter.”

[89:35]  ¹⁴ tn Or “lie to.”

[89:36]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “his offspring forever will be.”

[89:36]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and his throne like the sun before me.”

[89:37]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “like the moon it will be established forever.”

[89:37]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “and a witness in the sky, secure.” Scholars have offered a variety of opinions as to the identity of the “witness” referred to here, none of which is very convincing. It is preferable to join וְעֵד (vÿ’ed) to עוֹלָם (’olam) in the preceding line and translate the commonly attested phrase עוֹלָם וְעֵד (“forever”). In this case one may translate the second line, “[it] will be secure like the skies.” Another option (the one reflected in the present translation) is to take עד as a rare noun meaning “throne” or “dais.” This noun is attested in Ugaritic; see, for example, CTA 16 vi 22-23, where ksi (= כִּסֵּא, kisse’, “throne”) and ’d (= עד, “dais”) appear as synonyms in the poetic parallelism (see G. R. Driver, Canaanite Myths and Legends, 91). Emending בַּשַּׁחַק (bashakhaq, “in the heavens”) to כַּשַׁחַק (kashakhaq, “like the heavens”) – bet/kaf (כ/ב) confusion is widely attested – one can then read “[his] throne like the heavens [is] firm/stable.” Verse 29 refers to the enduring nature of the heavens, while Job 37:18 speaks of God spreading out the heavens (שְׁחָקִים, shÿkhaqim) and compares their strength to a bronze mirror. Ps 89:29 uses the term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim, “skies”) which frequently appears in parallelism to שְׁחָקִים.

[55:3]  ¹⁹ tn The jussive with vav (ו) conjunctive following the imperative indicates purpose/result.

[55:3]  ²⁰ tn Or “an eternal covenant with.”

[55:3]  ²¹ tn Heb “the reliable expressions of loyalty of David.” The syntactical relationship of חַסְדֵי (khasde, “expressions of loyalty”) to the preceding line is unclear. If the term is appositional to בְּרִית (bÿrit, “covenant”), then the Lord here transfers the promises of the Davidic covenant to the entire nation. Another option is to take חַסְדֵי (khasde) as an adverbial accusative and to translate “according to the reliable covenantal promises.” In this case the new covenantal arrangement proposed here is viewed as an extension or perhaps fulfillment of the Davidic promises. A third option, the one reflected in the above translation, is to take the last line as comparative. In this case the new covenant being proposed is analogous to the Davidic covenant. Verses 4-5, which compare David’s international prominence to what Israel will experience, favors this view. In all three of these interpretations, “David” is an objective genitive; he is the recipient of covenantal promises. A fourth option would be to take David as a subjective genitive and understand the line as giving the basis for the preceding promise: “Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to you, because of David’s faithful acts of covenantal loyalty.”

[1:5]  ²² tn Grk “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:5]  ²³ tn Grk “I have begotten you.”

[1:5]  ²⁴ tn Grk “And again,” quoting another OT passage.

[1:5]  ²⁵ tn The words “he says” are not in the Greek text but are supplied to make a complete English sentence. In the Greek text this is a continuation of the previous sentence, but English does not normally employ such long and complex sentences.

[1:5]  ²⁶ tn Grk “I will be a father to him and he will be a son to me.”