STUDIES IN SAMUEL No. 48

2 Samuel 8:1-18

November 25, 2001

Text Comment

What we are given in chapter 8 is a summary of David's military conquests organized geographically not chronologically. The vague temporal indication with which the chapter begins is an indication of this non-chronological organization: "In the course of time," or, as another translator has it, "And it happened thereafter…" [Alter, Com, 236] We have his campaign to the west in v. 1, east in v. 2, north in vv. 2-11, and south in vv. 13-14. During this period there were no powerful states in the ANE who were in a position to contest David's expansion of Israelite territory. It is interesting and important to note, however, that the maximum extent of Israel's empire was the land the Lord had promised to Abraham. She never aspired, even in the days of her power, to conquests on the scale of the great ANE empires.

v.1 "Metheg Ammah" is not otherwise attested. 1 Chron. 18:1 has "Gath and its villages."

v.2 This jarring note is not easy to reconcile with friendlier relations that David had with Moab earlier in his career (1 Sam. 22:3-4: David left his parents with the King of Moab for safe-keeping!). Remember, David was the great-grandson of Ruth the Moabitess. Something must have happened in the meantime. Perhaps Moab joined in an alliance with the anti-Israelite kingdoms of the Trans-Jordan. [So Alter]

v.4 The area, with its various kingdoms was known for its horses and chariots. At this point Israel's army was largely infantry. Solomon would build up its chariot forces.

v.6 Damascus lay to the south of Zobah and was part of a confederation of Aramean kingdoms, as was Zobah, that sometimes united against a common enemy. Hadadezer's reward for coming to the aid of Zobah was to be reduced to the status of a vassal by a triumphant King David.

The concluding sentence, "The Lord gave David victory wherever he went," is repeated again in v. 14 and so identifies the theme of the chapter.

v.8 These metals were measures of a king's and a nation's wealth. They would come in handy when it came time to build the temple!

v.10 This is not precisely what it sounds like: hearty congratulations from a friend. Tou is also paying tribute and confessing his subjection to David. He becomes a vassal but doesn't have to suffer the military defeat that made vassals of other kings and kingdoms. In 1 Chron. 18:10 Joram - which means "Yahweh is exalted" - is given as Hadoram - Hadad is exalted. Probably what this indicates is that David, as Tou's sovereign, changed the name of his son, the crown prince, to indicate that sovereignty. He now would bear the name of David's God not Tou's.

v.12 The mention of Edom and the Ammonites anticipates the account of their defeat in vv. 13-14 for the Edomites and chapters 10-12 for the Ammonites.

v.13 "became famous" is literally "won a name". Remember in 7:9 the Lord had promised to make David's name great.

v.15 Now are listed the senior bureaucrats in David's administration.

v.17 In 1 Sam. 22:20 it is Abiathar son of Ahimilech who was the sole survivor of Saul's massacre of the priests at Nob. Probably in an early manuscript the names of father and son were transposed.

Seraiah is called Sheva in 20:25 and Shavsha in 1 Chron. 18:16. It is possible that he was an Egyptian and was given a Hebrew name. The Egyptians had long experience in royal administration and it would not be surprising that David should hire an able administrator who knew how a sizable court ought to function and could make it function efficiently.

v.18 The Kerethites and Pelethities were two groups of foreign soldiers, serving as David's bodyguards. Royal bodyguards were often foreigners whose loyalty to the king was less likely to be effected by tribal allegiance or internal politics.

The NIV translates the Hebrew term as "royal advisers" because that is the meaning of the word that 1 Chron. 18:17 uses in the parallel passage. What this text actually says is that David's sons were priests. Now the use of that term "priest" here of David's sons has produced very conflicting interpretations.

1. The simplest is that the term, "priest" may have also served as a designation for "advisor." In 1 Kgs. 4:5 it may mean that. In that case, the term would be used here in a more original sense of the word, from which its religious use also derives: someone who administers some matter for another. So, religious administrators became "priests" - a term that became a technical religious term - while political advisers could be "priests" as well, but only in the old, general sense of an administrator.

2. Another view is that it is a positive thing, harking back to David's doing priestly things in chapter 6, where he wore a linen ephod and blessed the people in connection with the bringing of the ark to Jerusalem. The combination of priesthood and royalty would then anticipate their combination in the life and work of Jesus Christ.

3. Still another view is that this is, as one scholar says, "a stick of dynamite placed by the narrator under the perfection" of David's reign. [Fokkelmann, iii, 262-3] That is, it is a hint of David's approaching hubris. He is starting in this small way to act like a typical king, thinking himself above the law of God and man. Like Eli he does not prevent his sons from assuming privileges to which they had no right.

I confess myself unsure as to the proper way to read this. We can all look for clues as to the narrator's meaning as we read on in 2 Samuel.

Now, as last week with the previous chapter, so significant as the next chapter in the unfolding drama of God's covenant of grace - his covenant with the house of David - I want to set this chapter, seemingly so much more mundane, into its larger biblical and soteriological context. You know that word, "soteriology." Words that end with "…logy" mean either the study of, or the doctrine of something. Theology is thus the study of or the doctrine of God, anthropology is the study or the doctrine of man, harmatiology is the study of sin, eschatology is the study of or the doctrine of the last things. All of these terms derive from Greek words. Theos for God, anthropos for man, hamartia for sin, eschatos for last things, and so on. In the same way, soteriology is the study of salvation, because soteria is the Greek word for salvation. Well, you might well ask, how does this chapter, with its details about David's conquests fit into soteriology, the doctrine of salvation?

Well, the answer to that question is found in the fact that what David's conquests here represent, and are meant to represent, is the bestowal upon Israel of that land that had been promised by the Lord to Abraham in the covenant he made with the patriarch almost a thousand years before David. This is the first time in Israel's history when she actually possessed the entirety of "the Promised Land."

In Genesis 15:17-21, The Lord renewed his covenant with Abraham. You remember the scene. The Lord had commanded Abraham to take various animals, cut them in two, and arrange the halves opposite each other.

"When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, 'To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates - the land of the Kenites, Kennizites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites."

That list of peoples or ethnic groupings apparently is primarily a designation of the different groups that occupied larger Palestine. But the geographical designation is the important one for our purposes: from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates. The river of Egypt has sometimes been thought to be the Nile, or the easternmost branch of the Nile, but, in all likelihood it is rather the Wadi el-'Arish which runs north out of Sinai to the Mediterranean about 90 miles east of the Suez Canal. That Wadi - a wadi is a desert river-course that is dry much of the time but runs in the rainy season. The reason for its importance as a geographical boundary is that there is a perceptible change of terrain east and west of the Wadi el-'Arish. West, toward Egypt, is only barren desert; east there are meadows and arable land. [K. Kitchen, NBD, 354] What all of this means is simply that 2 Sam. 8, with its account of David's victories, indicates that David's rule extended over that territory that had been promised so long ago to Abraham.

Now, there can be no doubt about the importance of "the land" in the covenant that God made with Abraham and Israel, which is, after all, the covenant of grace under which we stand today, the gospel, as both Paul and the author of the Letter to the Hebrews call that covenant. The Hebrew word "land," eretz, is the fourth most commonly used word in the OT, or so I have been told. I didn't count the various contenders up to be sure! But you know, from your reading of the Bible, how largely the land features in the history of Israel's salvation. She is promised the land, she is delivered from bondage in Egypt in order to take possession of it, for want of faith her entrance is delayed 38 years, she is brought into the land by the power of God, she settles there, her fortunes wax and wane there as her faith in the Lord waxes and wanes, until finally she is driven out of the land as punishment for her faithlessness. Then, by the grace of God, a remnant is returned to the land where she waits in hope for the Lord to send her a king. The OT prophets cast their vision of the future salvation and prosperity of the people of God in terms of their settling in the land and prospering there and the kings of the earth bringing their homage to the Lord at Jerusalem.

In the OT, God's people are either pilgrims going to the land, or are in exile driven from the land, or are living in the land. With an instinct formed by the inescapable impression of all of this data, the Christian church has long understood the land, or the promised land, in the OT to serve as a type, and, in particular, as a type of heaven. It was this identification, of course, that made the wilderness an image of this world through which believers are passing as pilgrims and the crossing of the Jordan River, a metaphor for death.

And, of course, there is biblical justification for this interpretation of the place of the land in the Old Testament.

1. First, we have the express teaching in Hebrews 4 and 11 that the faithful of the ancient epoch knew very well that the real estate of Canaan itself was not, in the ultimate sense, the place they were heading or the land they were looking for. In Hebrews 4 the point is made that the Scripture itself shows us that "entering the rest of God" and "entering the land" as Israel did under Joshua are not the same thing. The rest of God lies ahead of all believers in the world to come. In Hebrews 11 we are told that Abraham and Sarah knew very well that what was being promised them was heaven, not Canaan, and so did those who followed them, so many of them happy to give up their lives in this world in order to obtain a place in the world to come, the heavenly country.

2. But, the typical or prophetic significance of the land is proved in another way in the New Testament. There are only three uses of "the land" in the New Testament and each of them represents some re-signification of the term.

In Psalm 37:10-11 we read: "A little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look for them, they will not be found. But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy great peace." There "land" is our Hebrew word eretz and certainly suggests in context the Promised Land and the inheritance of God's people in it, whatever more it certainly would have suggested to the godly in those days. Now, the Lord Jesus uses that text in his beatitudes, but transforms it, re-signifies the term "land" in his use of the sentence. You remember how the Lord Jesus has it: "Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth." Now, "land" is "the earth," the entire world. Clearly, both in the use of "land" in Psalm 37 and "earth" in Matthew 5:5, the terms mean more than simply earthly prosperity. But it is important to see that now, in the new epoch, the symbol of the divine blessing has become not simply one geographical section of this world, but the entirety of it.

Another example of this same re-signification of "land" is found in Romans 4:13. There we read, "It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith." Well, to be precise, Abraham was not promised the world, but the Promised Land, Palestine and some adjacent territories. But, because that promised land was emblematic of the new heavens and the new earth, Paul is entirely within his rights to transfer "land" to "world." In each case, he is not talking first and foremost about real estate in the world to which someone holds possession during some period of human history. He is talking about the world in its largest and most consummate sense, what the world will become when it is renewed by its Creator at the end of time.

The final example of the changed use of "land" in the New Testament is found in Ephesians 6:3. There we read, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 'Honor your father and mother' - which is the first commandment with a promise - 'that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.'" Now, as you remember the fifth commandment, in both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, what is promised is long life in the land. But here Paul makes it a promise of long life on the earth, a way of adjusting the universal reach of the commandment to the circumstances of a largely Gentile congregation of Christians. He is not so much changing the meaning of "land" in this case as in the other two. Here "earth" does not seem to be used in its larger, prophetic meaning, but in the more ordinary sense. It is not so much a theological re-signification of the meaning of "land" as it is an application of it in a new form or context. It is a demonstration of the fact, by the way, that the ten commandments mean the same thing today that they always meant and that they can be applied in any time, any place, any set of circumstances.

What all of this means is that the theological meaning of the land is just as really present in the teaching of the New Testament as it was in the Old, but takes a more universal form. It is still heaven that is being spoken of in an earthly figure; it is still a metaphor for that place where God is uniquely present, where the people of God enter into their rest and their inheritance and enjoy an unparalleled bounty. But a more explicit doctrine of heaven given us in the New Testament, along with a universalized church, made the figure of the Promised Land less suitable to convey these eternal realities. Still, it is worth remembering, that even in the NT we are taught about heaven in earthly figures. It is described as a walled city atop a mountain, and so on. It is only in this way that we can grasp the point and take it to heart.

There are so many applications of this fact that our eternal destination is prefigured as a wonderful land or a renewed world. Let me mention just one in conclusion.

This way of describing heaven, this use of the imagery of "land," and "promised land," teaches us that there is a place to which we are going, not simply a condition of existence, but a place, as our Savior said, a place where human life, real and authentic human life will be lived. There is continuity between our life here and our life there. This helps us, as it has helped vast multitudes of believers before us, to anticipate and not to fear our deaths.

The other evening I got a call from Mrs. Margaret Rayburn. Margaret is the widow of the Rev. Robert Rayburn whose name has been in the Tacoma Telephone Book longer than mine. This Robert Rayburn was a godly minister who served for many years with Village Missions, a rural church planting ministry. I met them face-to-face for the one and only time at John and Kris Pappuleas' wedding. Through the years I have got calls that were intended for the other Rev. Robert Rayburn and he got calls that were intended for me. In fact, Margaret called me the other night to give me the phone number of a fellow in a PCA church in Pensacola, Florida, who had left a message on her answering machine asking me to call. We talked for a bit when she called and I learned that her husband had died exactly one year earlier, November 20th, 2000. He was home the last month and died in full faith and in possession of his powers to the end. In fact, she told me that on that day, a year ago, which happened also to be his birthday, she had asked him in the morning whether he would like to celebrate his birthday here or with the Lord. "With the Lord," he had said, and those were his last words.

See how naturally, how beautifully, how simply, believers think of heaven as the continuation of our life here, our completing of a journey we have been on all our lives, our life continuing but our leaving behind all its troubles, and ourselves, our very selves being present with the Lord. Saying that we will celebrate our birthday with the Lord is a very similar thing to saying that we will enter the promised land. I'm reasonably sure that Mr. Rayburn's first question when he found himself in heaven, was not: "Where's the cake?" But we know what we mean when we say such a thing as celebrating one's birthday in heaven. We are thinking about the world to come under the figure of this world and our experience of it. We don't know precisely what it will be like to enter heaven, first when we die and then at the resurrection, we don't know. But we know that there will be a natural continuation of life from this world to the next, that the life we live there will be a perfect form of the life we have lived so imperfectly here.

When we read that Canaan was a land flowing with milk and honey, we are being taught that heaven is a place where everything that makes life rich and beautiful and satisfying will be present in perfect measure. When we read that Israel was to drive out of the land all the wicked people who were there, we are taught that heaven will be a place where everything that corrupts and spoils life in this world will be completely removed and eradicated. The New Testament descriptions of heaven made precisely the same point, just in a different way.

O think!

To Step on shore,

And that shore heaven!

To take hold of a hand,

And that, God's hand!

To breathe a new air,

And feel it celestial air;

To feel invigorated,

And know it immortality!

O think!

To pass from the storm and the tempest

To one unbroken calm!

To wake up,

And find it - GLORY.