David’s last words speak of the goodness of authority when it is used well; especially when it is exercised with a recognition that all authority comes from God, and we are all accountable to him.  The heart of David’s words reveal that he was resting fully on the promises that the Lord had made to him. May we, too, rest completely on God’s promises to us, and upon the covenant that he established with us through the messiah, Jesus Christ.

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2 SAMUEL #26. The Last Words of David. 2 Samuel 23:1-7

1 Now these are the last words of David:
The oracle of David, the son of Jesse,
the oracle of the man who was raised on high,
the anointed of the God of Jacob,
the sweet psalmist of Israel:
2 “The Spirit of the LORD speaks by me;
his word is on my tongue.
3 The God of Israel has spoken;
the Rock of Israel has said to me:
When one rules justly over men,
ruling in the fear of God,
4 he dawns on them like the morning light,
like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning,
like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth.
5 “For does not my house stand so with God?
For he has made with me an everlasting covenant,
ordered in all things and secure.
For will he not cause to prosper
all my help and my desire?
6 But worthless men are all like thorns that are thrown away,
for they cannot be taken with the hand;
7 but the man who touches them
arms himself with iron and the shaft of a spear,
and they are utterly consumed with fire.” (2 Samuel 23:1-7, ESV)

Chapter 23:1-7 contains “the last words of David.” This is not meant to be literal, but it is a picturesque way of saying “these are the thoughts David was having at the end of his life, this was something he wrote near the end.” All of these verses (1-7) are in the form of Hebrew poetry. Hebrew poetry does not usually rhyme. It is about “parallel thoughts.” You can see the parallelism if you just read it carefully. My Bible separates the parallel thoughts by starting new lines. I’ll do it here with two slashes, like this: “//.” So we have: “The last words of David//the declaration of the son of Jesse//the declaration of the man raised on high//the one anointed by the God of Jacob//the favorite singer of Israel” You can see that each phrase gives us a parallel description of David. First he is named, then he is the son of Jesse, and so on. They are parallel thoughts about who David was.

Next come David’s own words. Verses two and three express poetically that David is sharing insights that he received from the Lord.

The first insight is that when someone rules a group of people in justice, and in the fear of the Lord, it is a wonderful, positive thing. I think sometimes, even yet today, it is hard for us to grasp what life was like for people in the ancient middle east. Existence was difficult, brutal and short. When someone had wealth and power, they used that power to benefit themselves, and their family and friends. If you did not have wealth or power, and were not related to someone who did, you were out of luck. Of course, that meant that, by far, most people were out of luck. The powerful would do to you whatever they could get away with, if they thought it would benefit them, and often, that was a lot. They might simply take your things, including your home. If you were a man, they might take your wife or daughter, if they found them attractive. If you were a woman, you had no rights even to your own person. So David’s words here are revolutionary:

“The one who rules the people with justice,
who rules in the fear of God,
4 is like the morning light when the sun rises
on a cloudless morning,
the glisten of rain on sprouting grass.”

David is saying that a ruler does not get to do whatever he wants. Even kings themselves are under a greater authority—God. The only responsible way to exercise authority is by being under authority yourself. In other words, no matter how much authority or influence we might have, we must use it with a recognition that we are accountable before God for the way we use it. When we do that, it is a wonderful blessing.

Do a thought experiment with me. Picture a policeman. He has the authority to compel you to obey the law. If you refuse to obey him when he gives you a lawful order, he has the authority to use force to compel you to obey, or to enact consequences on you if you don’t obey. But the key here is that what he is telling you to do is a lawful order. If he stops you while you are driving and demands to see your driver’s license, that is a lawful order. The policeman is himself acting appropriately under authority – the authority of the laws and regulations that say the police can stop you and ask for your license. However, if he stops you and demands that you give him all your money, the policeman is no longer acting “under authority.” No law gives him the authority to take your money. Therefore, when he is not himself under authority, he has no real authority to exercise.

Or imagine a boss. Suppose you work at a place of business that has a dress code, or uniforms, for employees. In that situation, your boss, under the authority of the rules of employment, has the right (the authority) to tell you how to dress. If you show up to work dressed inappropriately, she has the authority to enact consequences on you for that. But if the boss sees you when you are not working, she does not have the authority to tell you what to wear. In that situation she is not under authority as your supervisor, therefore she has no authority over what you wear.

We take all this as a matter of course. But these things were not always obvious, especially not during David’s lifetime. The idea that the king himself must be under God’s authority in order to exercise authority was revolutionary. The only reason we think it’s normal is because we live in a civilization that was profoundly shaped by the bible, including David’s words right here. When David said these things, it was an amazing thought: even the king has no appropriate authority unless he himself remains under the authority of God.

By the way, I think this is one reason that the Lord inspired Nathan the prophet to tell the story he did when he confronted David about Bathsheba and Uriah. David himself was passionate about people not abusing their authority. When he saw that he himself had been abusing his authority, it broke him. So, now, at the end of his life, David wants people to remember that even he himself had to remain under God’s authority.

Jonathan Leeman, in his book Authority, describes two different kinds of authority. The first is an authority to command. This is the authority to compel others to obey by causing serious consequences for those who disobey. A policewoman has that kind of authority. Bosses and owners have that sort of authority as well, at least in the workplace. Parents have that sort of authority over young children.

The second kind of authority is an authority of counsel. This is an authority that can strongly recommend a course of action, however, if someone wants to disregard it, the person with counsel authority cannot make someone else listen to them or compel them to obey them, or enact serious consequences upon them.

Most adult humans in the western world do have certain areas where they exercise appropriate authority. If you are a business owner, you have authority over your employees. If you are a boss, or supervisor, or team-lead, you have authority over others at your workplace. Even if you are a server at a restaurant, you have a kind of authority over the restaurant patrons. You can tell them not to go into the kitchen, or not to be disruptive. They must wait on your service before they can order or eat. Parents, of course, exercise significant authority over their children. Many children have authority over their pets. Even parents of adult children have a kind of authority over their grown children, in that their words feel “weighty,” to their kids. We can easily brush off something said by a random stranger, but it’s harder to ignore the words of a parent, even when we are grown.

Authority can be abused—I would guess we all know that. But do we know that when authority exists and is used properly, under the authority of God, it is, in fact, a blessing? Without God-blessed parental authority many children would die, or be treated cruelly. Without lawful authority the strong and wealthy would take whatever they wanted, and the rest of us would not be able to stop them. Authority that recognizes that God is over everything is a force for good. It allows families and societies to flourish in safety.

In verse five, David moves on. I spent a lot of time and labor trying to get at the Hebrew of this verse, because there is something that is not evident in the English translations. The closest is the ESV, which typically is the most literal. But let me give it to you in a “literal-ish” translation so you can see something going on in Hebrew:

Indeed, is it not right, my house, with God?

Indeed, an everlasting covenant he made with me, being arranged in the whole and being secured

Indeed, all of my salvation and every desire

Indeed, will he not bring to fruition?

There are four phrases, each one beginning with the Hebrew word that I have translated here “indeed.” The word is a conjunction that can be used as “for,” “and,” “but” and several other possibilities depending on context, but the point is, in Hebrew these four phrases each begin with the same word.  This sets apart this verse from the others, and also makes us pay attention to each of the phrases.

In the first place, David has confidence that his house is indeed right with God. Now, he is not claiming to be innocent before God. But he is confident that the Lord has made things right with his entire family line. Indeed, it is about the covenant that the Lord made with David in 2 Samuel 7:8-17, the covenant of a messiah, a descendant of David, who will reign forever. David does not feel confident because of anything within himself. No, he is confident because the Lord made a covenant—a solemn agreement—with David, and the Lord arranged it, and the Lord secured it. The promise is not contingent upon David: it is the Lord’s doing from first to last. In case we missed it, David is talking, indeed, about all of his salvation, all of his desire, which, indeed, the Lord himself will bring to fulness.

This is the core of David’s last word and testimony, and it is that all his hope is in the coming of the promised Messiah, a descendant of David, and David dares to trust this hope because it is the Lord who made the covenant, the promise, and he who will make it happen.

Once again we see that the writer of Samuel is pointing us to something beyond just David. David’s own hope was not in himself, but in the Lord, and the Lord’s promises, especially in the promised messiah. We too, should not hope in a worldly leader, government, or system, nor even in our own talent or hard work, but in the promises of God, and in salvation through his promised Messiah, Jesus Christ. All our hopes and desires should be, like David, fixed on the promises of God, and upon the messiah, Jesus Christ. When that is the case, we can find rest and peace in our hearts, even as David himself did.

This last saying of David is put forward in a kind of shortened chiastic structure. The first part talks about the goodness of God when people live under his authority. The middle part, the “main point,” is the one we’ve just looked at, which is that our hope should be firmly rooted in the eternal promises of God, our desire should be for his chosen Messiah. Next, the ending part is a kind of reverse mirror of the first part: the fate of people who do not live under the Lord’s authority, and who do not hope in the promises of his covenant. Such people are like thorns. You can’t even touch them, lest you hurt yourself. Instead, thorns are killed by cold iron and then destroyed by hot fire. In the same way, for those who reject the authority of the Lord, the end is one to consider soberly.

All right, so where does this leave you? Perhaps you need to give some thought to the areas in your life where you have some authority. Maybe you need to remember that we can only properly be in authority if we are under authority, especially, under the authority of the Lord.

The writer of the book of Samuel probably lived two generations after David. The kingdom of Israel that David had worked so hard to create and secure was now split in half. The kings of both new kingdoms were not remotely like David. I suspect that people during that time were inclined to look at the past, especially to the time of David, and wish that they could have another king like him. But the author of this book is saying: “Don’t waste time wanting another David to come along. Instead, want what David himself wanted.” The heart of David’s last words are his trust in the promises of God. All his desire is wrapped up in what God promised. His heart is at peace because he believes what God has said.

I’m at an age where it’s easy to look back at earlier parts of my life and wish things were like that again. I’m tempted to want to somehow regain things that are lost in the past. But the message here is this: what’s past is past, and even back then it wasn’t everything you needed. Instead, like David, let’s learn to desire the Lord and the fulfillment of his promises above everything else.

One of my prayers for myself is that I desire what God has promised more than I desire anything else. When what we desire most is the Lord himself, our innermost being is fully satisfied. Often, I find that I have all sorts of other desires competing with my desire for the Lord. Sometimes, I have to pray kind of like this: “Lord, I want to want you more than anything. Please work in me so that I desire most what you want me to desire most.” That is a prayer that he loves to answer. All he requires is our willingness for him to make it so.

May we, too, trust God and be at rest in our souls.