House of David

“ What a hero David was! A man of war and strength conquering always and never conquered. And now the stumbler in Israel, the weakest one, will have strength and courage like David. And David shall be as God, as the angel of Jehovah before them. This is a startling promise. A similar word is found in Exodus vii: 1, And the Lord said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh; and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet. The house of David will during the millennium be supreme in rule and in glory. ”

“ Poor Gabrielle, and poor Tom! mused David. Life had dealt oddly with both these long-ago, eager, happy children, as Life seemed to have a fashion of dealing with the children of so strange and silent, so haunted and mysterious an old house. The shadow of the house, as real upon his spirit as was the actual shadow of the autumn twilight upon these stained old walls, shut heavily upon David as he crossed the upper hallways and turned the knob of the sitting-room door. ”

“ David sighed and looked about him. He was tired and hungry, and he did not understand things at all. Something very wrong, very terrible, must be the matter with his father. Here it was almost dark, yet they had no place to go, no supper to eat, while far, far up on the mountain-side was their own dear home sad and lonely without them. Up there, too, the sun still shone, doubtless,—at least there were the rose-glow and the Silver Lake to look at, while down here there was nothing, nothing but gray shadows, a long dreary road, and a straggling house or two in sight. ”

“ And David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell on their faces. 17 And David said to God, Is it not I who commanded the counting of the people? It is I who have sinned and done evil. But these sheep -- what have they done? Please, let your hand be against me and against my father's house, but these people do not deserve to be plagued.
18 And the angel of Yahweh commanded Gad to say to David that David should go up to set up an altar to Yahweh at the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. 19 And David went up, as Gad told him in the name of Yahweh. ”

“ The inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be as strong and fit for action as nature made David, and their magistrates as wise and fit for counsel as grace made him. But this was to have its full accomplishment in Christ; now the house of David looked little and mean, and its glory was eclipsed, but in Christ the house of David shone more brightly than ever, and its countenance was as that of an angel ”

“ Sukkâh, a hut, indicates, by way of contrast to bayith, the house or palace which David built for himself upon Zion (2Sa 5:11) , a degenerate condition of the royal house of David. This is placed beyond all doubt by the predicate nōpheleth, fallen down. As the stately palace supplies a figurative representation of the greatness and might of the kingdom, so does the fallen hut, which is full of rents and near to destruction, symbolize the utter ruin of the kingdom. If the family of David no longer dwells in a palace, but in a miserable fallen hut, its regal sway must have come to an end. ”

“ David’s greatest desire before he died was to build a house for God. The ark of God had never had a house to rest in, and David was not satisfied to have a splendid palace to live in himself, and to have nothing but a tent in which to keep God’s ark. ”

“ The acknowledgment which David makes of his own condition: I am a stranger in the earth. We all are so, and all good people confess themselves to be so; for heaven is their home, and the world is but their inn, the land of their pilgrimage. David was a man that knew as much of the world, and was as well known in it, as most men. God built him a house, established his throne ”

“ David was standing outside a trim six-roomed house in the upper part of the little Lancashire town of Wakely, waiting for Lucy Purcell.
She came at last, flushed and discomposed, pulling the door hastily to behind her.
They walked on a short distance, talking disconnectedly of the weather, the mud, and the way on to the moor, till she said suddenly:
'I wish people wouldn't be so good and so troublesome!'
'Did Robert wish to keep you at home?' inquired David, laughing.
'Well, he didn't want me to come out with—anybody but him,' she said, flushing. 'And it's so bad, because one can't be cross. ”

“ He passed before the front of the Abbey—a mansion of the dead, with row after row of closed blinds, masses of smokeless chimneys, and patches of weeds growing thick in the great sweep before the house. Even with its air of pitiless desertion, its severe, semi-ecclesiastical outline, its ruined cloisters empty to the sky on one wing, its unbroken and gloomy silence, the place had its atmosphere. David slackened the speed of his car, paused for a moment and looked back at the little creeper-covered cottage on the other side of the moat. ”

“ Therefore they say, There are the blind and the lame; he can't come into the house. 5:9 David lived in the stronghold, and called it the city of David. David built around from Millo and inward. 5:10 David grew greater and greater; for Yahweh, the God of Armies, was with him. 5:11 Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David, and cedar trees, and carpenters, and masons; and they built David a house. 5:12 David perceived that Yahweh had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for his people Israel's sake. ”

“ IV. Blessings are entailed upon the family and posterity of David. David had purposed to build God a house, and, in requital, God promises to build him a house, v. 11. Whatever we do for God, or sincerely design to do though Providence prevents our doing it, we shall in no wise lose our reward. He had promised to make him a name (v. 9) ; here he promises to make him a house, which should bear up that name. It would be a great satisfaction to David, while he lived, to have the inviolable assurance of a divine promise that his family should flourish when he was dead. ”

“ The first slight flurry of snow dusted the dead weeds of the open spaces round the house, and the reflections from it passed through the clear, broad panes of the windows to strike a grimmer chill from the shimmering surfaces of ash and oak. Never before had the world seemed to him so empty and so cold and so unsympathetic. And when his own wife had said to him, in accents almost of reproach, "Oh, David, David, how could you take such a time as this to be sick, with all the worry of moving and furnishing and Rosy's wedding and everything else?" ”

“ And He who is the key of David, and the sceptre of the house of Israel, who opens and no one can shut; who shuts and no one can open; may he be thy helper! He who bringeth the bounden from the prison-house, and the one sitting in darkness and the shadow of death! that in all things thou mayest deserve to follow him of whom David sang, Thy seat, O God, endureth for ever; the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre. ”

“ David's zeal for the house of the Lord is thus acknowledged (compare Ps. cxxxii. 1) , and so also is the correctness of his supposition, that the building of the fixed temple is intimately [Pg 134] connected with his being raised to be ruler over Israel. The first answer of Nathan remains correct; it is only more distinctly and closely defined and modified. David is to build the house,—not, however, in his own person, but in his seed, and after the Lord has begun to fulfil His promise, that He would make him an house. ”

“ And the sons of Jeduthun were porters.
43 And all the people departed every man to his house: and David returned to bless his house.
Chapter 17
1 Now it came to pass, as David sat in his house, that David said to Nathan the prophet, Lo, I dwell in an house of cedars, but the ark of the covenant of the LORD remaineth under curtains.
2 Then Nathan said unto David, Do all that is in thine heart; for God is with thee. ”

“ He sent him Tyrian artisans, who adorned David's palace on Zion. The Israelites were not skilled in fine building. After this palace was completed we must look on David's house and court as splendid and numerous. There was the chancellor, the keeper of the treasury, the chief tax-gatherer, the scribe with his subordinates; there were singers, male and female, the body-guard, and the servants. [310] David had brought seven wives from Hebron to his new metropolis. Michal, the daughter of Saul, had borne no children to David; his eldest son, Amnon, was by Ahinoam of Jezreel ”

“ It would have been a difficult matter for any one to raise an objection to the course of David in this proceeding. The king and all his captains were engaged in it; and the burst of music would have drowned any objection. But, ah, how soon was all this exultation checked! "The oxen stumbled;"—"Uzza put forth his hand," vainly imagining that God would suffer the ark of His presence to fall to the ground. He who had maintained the dignity of that ark, even in the dark solitude of the house of Dagon, would surely preserve it from dishonor amid the mistakes and confusion of His people. ”

“ THE CONCLUSION OF THE HALLEL 109
shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for unclean- ness."
Now, imagine Israel, at that time overwhelmed with the sense of God's marvellous grace in their deliverance, joining together in this glorious song of praise and triumph :
" O give thanks (or literally ' confess ') unto Jehovah ; for He is
good :
For His mercy endureth for ever. Let Israel now say, That His mercy endureth for ever. Let the house of Aaron now say, That His mercy endureth for ever. ”

“ But, blessed be the God of all grace, a deliverer has appeared—One mighty to save, the Son of God, the true David, the Anointed King of Israel and of all the earth. He has met the need, filled up the blank, satisfied the yearnings of the heart. But how? where? when? By His death on Calvary, in that terrible hour when all creation was made to feel the solemn reality of what was being transacted. Yes, my reader, the cross was the field where the battle was fought, and the victory won. There it was that the strong man had all his armor taken from him, and his house spoiled. ”

“ His eye is caught by the bright flowers and ribbons brought in by David. Their effect of young gayety touches some chord in him more than usually sensitive at this moment. "Flowers and ribbons I see over there," he muses audibly; "Sweet and youthful they look! How come they in my house?" David is relieved to find him in this gentle mood, yet puzzled at the remoteness and abstraction from which the master is but slowly drawn. ”

“ The blue smoke rises into the misty air; the sun and the spring caress the rugged lonely place.
With a beating heart David opened the gate into the field, walked round the little garden, let himself into the yard, and with a hasty glance at the windows mounted the steps and knocked.
No answer. He knocked again. Surely Aunt Hannah must be about somewhere. Eleven o'clock; how quiet the house was!
This time there was a clatter of a chair on a flagged floor inside, and a person with a slow laboured step came and opened.
It was Reuben. ”

“ And here was the Foundry—David could hardly prevent himself from marching into the yard littered with mysterious odds and ends of old iron which had been the treasure house of his childhood. But no Tom—and no familiar face anywhere.
Yes!—there was the shoemaker's cottage, where the prayer-meeting had been, and there, on the threshold, looking at the approaching figure, stood the shoemaker's wife, the strange woman with the mystical eyes. David greeted her as he came near. She stared at him from under a bony hand put up against the sun, but did not apparently recognise him ”

“ That David understood this to refer to Christ, we need have no doubt whatever, because the matter is settled positively by Inspiration. Why try to get rid of the Messianic application of such prophecies by saying that they found their fulfillment in the history of Solomon? But how can one satisfy himself with such a claim, when David says of the matter, "Thou hast spoken of thy servant’s house for a great while to come." And according to his dying words he saw in the promise "all his salvation." ”