2 Samuel 7:12-13
When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever.
God made a series of covenants or “bonds of sacred kinship” with a series of people in Scripture. First with Adam, then with Noah, then Abraham, Moses and, in today’s verse, with David, God enters into a sacred family bond in which He promises certain blessings and demands certain conditions be met. What is curious about the covenant with David is that it is, oddly, a covenant with David which shall be kept through the “son of David.” Since it is an everlasting covenant, this cannot mean that it refers only to David’s immediate heir, Solomon. It refers rather to the “house of David” — all the heirs of David who will occupy the throne of Israel. And since, politically speaking, the “house of David” one day loses forever political domination of Israel, the promise that “I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever” cannot mean a promise of a perpetual political throne. Rather, all the earthly Davidic kings are, in the end, merely signs or foreshadows of the ultimate “son of David” who did indeed establish the throne of David’s kingdom forever in the heavens, where He is seated at the right hand of the Father and from whence He shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. Come, O Son of David!
