April 8 - Psalm 105; 2
Sam 7; 1 Chron 17
Psalm
105 is a great overview of the history of God’s love for the Israelites up to
the point of the exodus and exhorts us to tell of his faithfulness and
deliverance. While we don’t read it today, Psalm 106 continues on to tell of
Israel’s disobedient response.
Then
in 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles we have almost the identical revelation from God
to Nathan and subsequent prayer by David. There are a couple of minor
differences, mostly attributed to the perspective of the person who wrote
Chronicles and his admiration for David – he refuses to call Saul by name
(calls him ‘the predecessor’) and he emphasizes David’s position as king.
A
couple of highlights – David refers to God several times as “O Sovereign LORD”,
which is ‘adonay Yahweh’ in Hebrew, and he refers to himself even more often as
“your servant”.
In
2 Sam 7:26 and 1 Chron 17:26, David responds to God’s promise to make him
famous by praying that, if he does as he promised, God’s name will be great
forever, not his own.
Did
you find 2 Sam 7:15 and 1 Chron 17:13 disturbing? God says he’ll never take his
love away from Solomon (yet unborn), as he “took it away from Saul.” It’s
important to look back to the original language to understand this passage. The
word ‘love’ here is ‘hesed’. While the majority of times it is used in the Old
Testament (187 out of 245) it is translated ‘love’, the word actually means
loyalty, joint obligation, faithfulness, goodness, and/or graciousness. It
doesn’t mean he loved Saul less than anyone else (you and me included), but
that he no longer felt an obligation to be gracious or loyal toward him. God
will not take his ‘chesed’ love (that’s equivalent to the Greek ‘agape’) away
from anyone.
That
in itself should encourage us to tell of God’s wonders, as Psalm 105 commands!
TOMORROW’S
TEXT: 2 Sam 8-10; 1 Chron 18-19; Psalm 60
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