Chapter 7: the First-Level Fulfillment—From Conquest to Kingship

Scripture Passages

2 Samuel 7:1-17
1 Kings 9:1-9

Brief Retrospect

When the kingdom of glory offered to Adam at creation was forfeited because of Adam’s disobedience, God in his grace revealed the promise of the Seed to come, through whose obedience the kingdom originally offered to Adam would be bestowed upon the elect. The rest of the Bible is the unpacking of that promise of the Seed and his coming kingdom. The Old Testament tells us how that promise was fulfilled in a provisional way in Israel. The Israelite theocracy was the kingdom of glory in provisional form. The kingdom of God has come whenever God exercises his sovereign power (1) to bestow his holy realm (2) on his holy people (3) through his obedient king. It takes some time for all three elements to be put in place.

The Formation of God’s Holy People

First, God forms his holy people. This began when God called Abraham and said, “I will multiply you greatly … and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations” (Gen 17:2-4). We see this taking place in an initial form when Abraham has Isaac in his old age. Then Isaac begets Jacob, and Jacob begets twelve sons. By the time the family of Jacob and his sons and their wives and children go down into Egypt, they are a sizeable clan of 70 people (Gen 46:27; Exod 1:5). While they are in Egypt they “were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong” (Exod 1:7), echoing the cultural mandate of Gen 1:28. By the time of Moses, they had become a large nation. We don’t know the exact number, but if the census of men of fighting age is any indication—603,550 (Num 1:46)—the nation must have been well over a million strong.

The procreative aspect was not sufficient, however. It was by means of the exodus that God fashioned the seed of Abraham into a nation. The people always looked back on this event as a key moment in their history. It was the moment that God himself promised to Abraham in the self-maledictory oath: “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions” (Gen 15:13-14). So it is not surprising that in later times, when the covenant relationship seems on the verge of being broken by Israel’s sin, they would appeal not only to the Abrahamic covenant but to the great moment of national redemption, the exodus.

When they sinned in the incident of the Golden Calf, Moses interceded, “O Lord God, do not destroy your people and your heritage, whom you have redeemed through your greatness, whom you have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand” (Deut 9:26). Later, when the Babylonians came and destroyed the temple, the psalmist cried out, “Remember your congregation, which you have purchased of old, which you have redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage!” (Ps 74:4).

The concept of redemption presupposes the concept of slavery. When a person or a piece of property is sold into slavery, it is the redeemer who pays the ransom price to buy them back, thus delivering them from slavery and setting them free. This is what God did for Israel. The payment price was the Passover lamb that was slaughtered and whose blood was sprinkled on the door posts of the houses of the Israelites so that the destroying angel would spare them.

However, as great as the redemption of Israel from bondage in Egypt was, this was not the only thing that made them God’s holy people. A key component of that nation-forming process was the inauguration of the Mosaic covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai. By entering into that covenant, and promising to obey the terms of that covenant, they were made into something special for God. “If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples” (Exod 19:5). All the nations of the earth belong to God in a general sense, as part of common grace, but it was Israel’s privilege to be God’s “treasured possession.” What makes them distinct from the other nations? It is the fact that they are “a holy nation” (Exod 19:6), set apart to God from the common grace realm by God’s own presence in their midst.

The people are made holy by means of the holy presence of God in their midst in the tabernacle. The way the camp of Israel was arranged around the tabernacle tells us that they are a cultically focused people: “They shall camp facing the tent of meeting on every side” (Num 2:2). The tabernacle is called “the tent of meeting,” for “there I will meet with the people of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by my glory” (Exod 29:43). After the tent and all its furnishing were complete, the Glory-Cloud “filled” the tabernacle (Exod 40:34). It was so intense that Moses was not able to enter the tent. Because of the presence of God in the midst of the people, they are “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod 19:6).

In addition, it would be by means of the Mosaic laws, especially the laws pertaining to holiness and to purification for uncleanness, as well as the sacrificial system with its provisions for atonement and purification (above all the annual Day of Atonement ritual), that they would be able to live with God dwelling among them without being consumed.

The Bestowal of God’s Holy Realm

The first element, the formation of God’s holy people, has been accomplished and narrated in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. Next, the bestowal of the holy realm upon the holy people becomes the focus at the time of the conquest. This is the subject of the book of Joshua. Under Joshua’s leadership (under his covenant headship as God’s vassal-king who was charged with keeping the Law of Moses; Joshua 1:1-8), the Israelites engaged in warfare against the Canaanites and took possession of the land. This is holy war in which God is bringing judgment on the Canaanites for their extreme wickedness. He commanded the Israelites to utterly destroy them and not leave anything alive. The people of Israel were to “dispossess” the Canaanites and “dwell in their land” (Deut 12:29).

This is not warfare conducted according to just-war theory on common grace principles. Israel was not acting in self-defense. If the dispossessed Canaanites brought a complaint to an international court as aggrieved innocent people attacked by an outside people, the court would have found that Israel was acting contrary to the law of nations. Not only was Israel the aggressor, but the Canaanite population itself—men, women, and children—was targeted for destruction. God commanded them: “In the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction” (Deut 20:16-17; cp. 1 Sam 15:3). To “devote something to destruction” means that it is under the holy judgment of God and cannot be touched. When Achan took some of the devoted things in the Canaanite city of Ai (a beautiful cloak and some silver and gold), he himself was devoted to destruction (Josh 7). At the same time, the Israelites were to destroy the idolatrous images, pillars, Asherah poles, and high places of Canaanite worship (Exod 34:13; Num 33:52; Deut 7:5). But most importantly, they were taking possession of the land because God had given it to them according to the terms of the Abrahamic covenant (Gen 15:18-20; Num 33:53). This was not common grace war; this was holy war.

Israel’s holy war against the Canaanites was really God’s holy war, using the Israelites as his instrument. They were executing God’s righteous and holy judgment against the Canaanites for their detestable idolatry, child sacrifice, and sexual immorality (Lev 18; 20). Kline calls it an “intrusion” of the eschaton into the midst of the common grace order, “an intrusion of the power, principles, and reality of the consummation into the period of delay” (Structure of Biblical Authority, 156). It was a foreshadow of the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord will be a day of judgment on all the ungodly who dwell on the earth, clearing the earth of all the unrighteous, so that the earth can be purified and be renewed as “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet 3:10-13). In the holy war against the Canaanites, we see the same eschatological principle: the wicked were judged and cleared out of God’s holy realm so that God’s redeemed people might be “planted” in the inheritance with its cultic focus on God’s holy mountain, where he dwells in his sanctuary and reigns over his people (Exod 15:17-18). The conquest of the land was more than a foreshadow of the day of the Lord. It was the day of the Lord at the typological level. It was an intrusion of the power, principles, and reality of the consummation.

After the destruction of the Canaanites was sufficiently accomplished to allow the people of God to settle there, they began to take possession of the land. Joshua divided the inheritance among the 12 tribes. Joshua, as type of Christ, granted each tribe their inheritance. And “so the Lord gave Israel all the land which He had sworn to give to their fathers, and they possessed it and lived in it … Not one of the good promises which the Lord had made to the house of Israel failed; all came to pass” (Joshua 21:43, 45).

But because the inheritance in the land was only a prototype of the ultimate inheritance, the new creation, they did not fully possess it, nor was it ever perfectly purified from sin. In the book of Judges we learn that the land was still occupied in various regions by the Philistines and the Midianites and other enemies of God’s people. They did not utterly drive them out (Judges 1:21, 27-36). As a result, they were ensnared and became unfaithful to the Lord and went after other gods, the gods of the Canaanites (Judges 2:11-13). The last verse of the book of Judges tells us part of the reason why: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). The first two elements have been put in place—the collective seed has inherited the land. But the third element is still lacking—the individual seed, God’s vassal-king.

God’s Vassal-King

This then sets the stage for 1 and 2 Samuel, which narrate the final piece of the puzzle, the provision of God’s vassal-king, David and his dynasty. When God sets up the Davidic kingship, all three elements are finally in place: God’s obedient vassal-king is mediating the blessings of God’s reign to God’s holy people in God’s holy realm.

Let’s take a more in-depth look at the Davidic covenant established in 2 Samuel 7. There are two aspects of the promise, and these two aspects appear to be in conflict with one another: the first aspect is the unconditional guarantee of a lasting dynasty; the second aspect of the Davidic covenant is the re-appearance of the works principle.

First Aspect: Unconditional Guarantee

The heart of the Davidic covenant is God’s unconditional guarantee that David will have a perpetual dynasty. This is stated in 2 Sam 7:13, 16, God is going to raise up for David a descendant, a seed, and God is going to establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

What kind of covenant is the Davidic covenant? Is it a conditional covenant of works, or an unconditional covenant of grace? Is it like the Adamic covenant of works and the Mosaic covenant of works, in which blessings are promised for obedience and cursing for disobedience? Or is it a guaranteed covenant of promise like the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 15?

Psalm 132:11 tells us: “The Lord swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back: ‘One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne’” (ESV).

This language reminds us of the Abrahamic covenant. Like the oath that God swore to Abraham, the Davidic covenant is an unconditional guarantee in which God swore on oath to do what he promised. In this covenant God committed himself to establish David’s seed forever and to maintain a king upon his throne. The Davidic covenant builds upon the Abrahamic promise by zeroing in on the individual seed. It is the continuation of the promise concerning the Seed:

Genesis 3:15 → Abrahamic covenant → Davidic covenant

Way back in Genesis 17, God had promised Abraham that kings would come forth from him (vv. 6, 16). And when you come to the end of Genesis, when Jacob is blessing his 12 sons, we read, in Genesis 49:10: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.” So that is the first aspect of the Davidic covenant—it is a guarantee of the Messiah to come.

“May people be blessed in him, all nations call him blessed!” (Psalm 72:17) echoing God’s promise to Abraham that “in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14). Notice that both the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants are essentially Messianic, since they are focused on the issue of the coming individual Seed. Remember that the word “seed” occurs in 2 Samuel 7:12: “When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant (seed) after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom.”

Its unconditional and unbreakable character is repeated in the prophecy of Jeremiah, in the same context as the prophecy of the new covenant: “Thus says the Lord: If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night will not come at their appointed time, then also my covenant with David my servant may be broken, so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne” (Jer 33:20-21)

Second Aspect: Works Principle

But notice that there is a second aspect that seems to be in tension with the first aspect. God says he will discipline David’s sons if they are disobedient: “I will be a father to him and he will be a son to me; when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men” (2 Sam 7:14). Another passage which focuses on the conditionality of the Davidic covenant is Psalm 132:11-12: “The Lord swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back: ‘One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne. If your sons keep my covenant and the statutes I teach them, then their sons will sit on your throne forever.’”

Why is this conditional aspect added to the Davidic covenant? Doesn’t this undermine its promissory character as a sovereign oath on God’s part? Doesn’t it make the Davidic covenant a conditional covenant based on works?

The conditionality of the Davidic covenant is directly related to the nature of the Mosaic covenant. The Mosaic covenant, or the Law, is a covenant of works, with blessings promised for obedience and curses threatened for disobedience. We had to ask a similar question in the previous chapter about the Mosaic covenant. Why would the Mosaic covenant be added to the Abrahamic? Does the addition of the Mosaic nullify the Abrahamic? The answer is no, because the Mosaic covenant only pertained to the first-level fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant—the provisional fulfillment of God’s promises in the land and the theocracy. The Mosaic covenant governed Israel on the typological level only.

The same principle applies here. As in the Abrahamic covenant, so in the Davidic, there are two levels of fulfillment. The first level fulfillment is David’s sons, Solomon on down to Zedekiah, the last king of Judah who was taken into captivity. The second level fulfillment of the Davidic promise is David’s greatest son, Jesus Christ. The threat of discipline applies only to the first level fulfillment, not the second level in Christ. The human kings on the first level could fail, and even lose the kingdom. The divine King on the second level will keep God’s covenant and statutes, and thus secure the kingdom eternally on behalf of his people.

The first level fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant began with the exodus and the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai. During the time that the kingdom of God was bestowed upon Israel in its provisional, typological form, there were two contradictory principles at work, but on two different layers. At the lower level stood the foundational promises of guaranteed grace to Abraham and his seed. On top of that was a second layer—the provisional kingdom which was enjoyed by Israel on the condition of faithful obedience to the Mosaic Law. In other words, the holy realm was given to the holy people, but only on condition that they kept the Law, the covenant that God made at Sinai.

The Davidic covenant fits within that two-layer framework. The Davidic covenant is God’s promise that Israel will be able to retain the land on the basis of the obedience of God’s vassal-king, whose primary task is to keep the Law, and to be the covenant head who leads God’s people in covenant faithfulness to the Law. In Deuteronomy 17 the Lord commanded the future kings of Israel to make a copy of the Law for themselves and read it all the days of their life. In other words, the Mosaic Law was given, not primarily for Israel to keep, but for Israel’s king! The king is God’s servant, commissioned to keep God’s Law as the covenant head over God’s people.

According to 1 Kings 9:1-9, the blessedness of the entire nation hangs on the obedience of Solomon. God didn’t say to Solomon, “If you disobey, I’ll just remove you from being king, and I’ll find another king.” Rather God said, “Then I will cut off Israel” (1 Kings 9:7).

The main plot of the Old Testament is that God’s people are enabled to remain in the land and are given peace from their enemies roundabout, only so long as God’s vassal-king is obedient and is following the Torah—so long as he’s making a copy of that Law and keeping it by his throne day and night, meditating upon it like the godly man in Psalm 1, so long as he is a righteous man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, but a godly man who keeps the Law of God. Then and only then is Israel going to flourish in the land. But once God’s vassal-king departs from God’s Law and begins to worship other gods, God’s people are in danger of forfeiting the land. Ultimately, the kings of Israel and Judah were so disobedient and apostate that God removed the kingdom from Israel and sent Israel into exile. The books of First and Second Kings narrate this story for us in great detail. The obedience or disobedience of the vassal-king is the barometer for the obedience or disobedience of the whole nation. As the king goes, so go the people. On numerous occasions we read that the king caused the people of Israel to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat with which he caused Israel to sin (1 Kings 22:52; 2 Kings 3:3; 10:29; 13:2, 11; 14:24; 15:9, 18, 24). Conversely, a good king like Josiah is described as one who causes Israel to walk faithfully in accordance with the Law of the Lord. The kings of Israel and Judah, then, are covenant heads. The entire nation’s relationship to God hangs on the obedience or disobedience of the vassal-king. God bestows the kingdom if the king is obedient. God removes the kingdom if the king is disobedient.

The Building of the Temple

Another vitally important aspect of the Davidic covenant is the issue of the dwelling place for God, the cultic focal point of God’s holy realm. It was precisely this issue of God’s dwelling place that sparked the revelation of God’s covenant with David. Having defeated the Philistines, the last remnants of the Canaanites, King David desired to build a permanent house for God to dwell in. He looked around at his beautiful royal palace and said to Nathan the prophet, “See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent” (2 Sam 7:2). At first, Nathan told him to go ahead and do what was in his heart. But later that night, the Lord commanded Nathan to tell David that he would not be the one to build a house for God’s name. That would be the great honor of his son, Solomon. It was in this context that God also made the covenant with David, promising him an unbroken royal dynasty that would never perish.

Thus, the twin concepts of temple and kingship are intertwined. In fact, in Hebrew there is a play on the word “house.” David looked around at his own “house” and wanted to build a “house” for God, but God said he would make David a “house” (2 Sam 7:5, 11). “House” in the first sense means a residence, whether David’s or God’s. If it is God’s residence, “house” means “temple,” but “house” in the second sense means “dynasty,” referring not to a physical structure but to the royal line of the sons of David, from Solomon to Christ.

Although David was not permitted to build the temple himself, he drafted the architectural plans and began collecting the vast sums of money and materials for the sacred place. After David died, this was the great task that occupied Solomon’s reign. On Mount Zion, with its heights reaching to heaven, Solomon built the temple to replace the temporary tent. After it was completed he brought the ark of the covenant into the inner sanctuary of the temple (1 Kings 8:1-11), and after this was done the Glory-Cloud filled the temple, just as it filled the tabernacle of old. Solomon offered a prayer of dedication for the temple in the presence of the assembly of Israel (vv 22-53). Then he offered hundreds of thousands of sacrifices to dedicate the temple to God (vv 62-64). This event is the pinnacle of the Old Testament. After that, it all goes downhill quite rapidly. But for one brief shining moment, the kingdom of glory was in place at the first level: God’s holy people, dwelling securely in God’s holy realm, focused on the cultic center on Mount Zion, and all under the headship of God’s vassal-king. As King David said, “O Lord, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells” (Psalm 26:8).

Kline References

“The Intrusion and the Decalogue.” Westminster Theological Journal 16 (1953-54): 1-22. Reprinted in condensed form in Part II, Chapter 3 of The Structure of Biblical Authority. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972.

Kingdom Prologue, 332-334 (the promised king).

God, Heaven and Har Magedon, 138-144 (the theocratic monarchy).

Discussion Questions

Is the Davidic covenant fundamentally a promise covenant with a works aspect or a works covenant with a promise aspect?
What is the relationship between the Abrahamic and the Davidic covenants?
Where does the OT say that the king must obey the law as a covenant head?
It is often overlooked or neglected, but how important is the Davidic covenant in biblical theology?