40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Samuel 22:37-23:2 (Episode 287)

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

Chad and Daniel continue to discuss a song of David and his role as the hymn writer of Israel. David gives all credit for his victories to God. David and his offspring are shown steadfast love forever. And the Lord lives. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Regional Event in Las Vegas 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 podcast, never podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. while you're over there make sure you go to the event events page now really speaking probably to the local people of las vegas and the surrounding area because by the time this releases we will be right in here we still stay in las vegas week but if you listen to this when it comes out and you still haven't registered and you're within driving distance you could still

you could still sign up and you could still come so this is gonna be the last time i bring this up chad but we'd love to hang out with you so uh come hang out with us in las vegas it's 65 for a two-day event includes your lunch on saturday do it chad we had to end sort of uh i don't know two-thirds of the way through a song of david feels very psalmy uh and uh it was actually you know it's kind of a weird thing because it gets kind of tacked on to the end of second samuel and feels a little out of place and like, why are we going back in David's life to revisit some song that he wrote when Saul was pursuing him? But turns out that it was actually a lot of fun to go through and we didn't even make it all the way through it because there was so much to talk about

in the midst of it. So we got about 36 verses in and had to quit because time did not allow us to make it all the way through so this might feel a little bit weird because we're going to be picking it up in the middle of a song i mean you know it's never a good idea to start a song in the you know two-thirds of the way through but that's what we're gonna do yeah yeah i honestly didn't know how it would go either because i mean we've been in pro so long my goodness we've done a couple of short canticles uh but not a lot of poetry so uh but it was great it was great just kind of a to go back in time in david's life and then also to tackle this from a little bit different genre perspective so yeah we uh we left off around 36 37 it's in the middle of a of a

section really where david is talking about this is he's using of course poetic language very graphic metaphorical language to describe his attack of and victory over his foes and he's he's kind of shifted here so earlier in the psalm he talks about how god's given him the victory. He gives all credit, all glory, all praise to God. But then in this particular section, he shifts, not detracting from talking about God giving him his victory, but to more focusing upon how he himself was engaged in this. So how God was using him to bring about this victory. And he has the typical language that you find in a lot of the Psalms that are more militaristic in tone, where he talks about his hands being trained for battle, has this image of bending a bow of

bronze, and uses language such as shields of salvation. And then we left off with talking about how the gentleness of God made him great. Picking up with 37, and then onward in the next few verses, he continues this language that's lifted from the battlefield. He says, you've gave me a wide place for my steps. My feet, literally in Hebrew, my ankles did not slip. So it's just the idea that he's moving here and there, he's running here and there, and God is making sure that he has stability, that he's not falling down, he's standing upright. And this imagery of feet or ankles are going to continue. It's going to continue in the next few verses where he talks about, in a second, his enemies are under his feet. Right now, he's just talking

about a place for him to stand his steps 38 says that he pursued his enemies and destroy them every chance i get i like to point out uh one of your favorite verbs hebrew verbs man this is which means to chase after or pursue yeah which uh as you probably know if you've read our stuff or listen to this podcast for a while that is the language of psalm 23 goodness and mercy do not follow us, they rod off us, they pursue us, they chase us down, they're hot on our heels. And actually, and interestingly, this verb is almost always used in contexts like this, where you're actually chasing down an enemy and not a friend. So it really, it's a verb that has more of a negative cast to it. And that's part of the irony, of course, of Psalm 23 is that goodness

and mercy pursue us chase us down of course with the goal of not harming us but instead of saving us well it's uh it's usually used in a context of almost like you're hunting somebody down right i mean like so you are uh you are the hunter and that and whatever it is that you are chasing down pursuing that's the prey yeah so in the context of god's goodness and mercy god's good goodness and mercy means to have us find us and will not stop tracking us down yeah in that case it's good to be the prey yes it's good to be the one who is chased hunted down so david here is using it in a more traditional way where he's chasing after hunting down his enemies and destroying them and he says i didn't turn back until they were consumed so he's going

all the way he's not this isn't in other words kind of a brief skirmish but this is an all-out attack in order to bring about this victory verse 39 he repeats that language of consuming i consume them i thrust them through so they were not able to rise they fell under my feet again here's picking up this language i mentioned earlier about the feet of david and every time i hear this and it's pretty common in the old testament to hear of enemies under the feet my mind immediately shifts back to genesis 3 15 where you have really the first usage of this idea of enemies being beneath the feet because of course there you have the seat of the woman who's at enmity with the serpent and it's under his feet it's under his specifically his heel that the head of the enemy

is crushed and of course the fangs at the same time will inject their poison into the heel of messiah but i think beneath beneath no pun intended all of this imagery of the enemies under the feet is that genesis 3 15 passage where the forces of evil are crushed beneath the the head of the forces of evil are crushed beneath the foot or the heel of the messiah yeah the sort of language of treading your enemy uh starts real early in the bible yeah yeah and you see it i i mean you see it all over uh not just the psalms and you know sections like this but you see it in the prophets as well i mean some pretty uh colorful uh sometimes even gruesome language of this like treading like you're uh you're treading on grapes you know treading on the the grapes of

wrath image that's taken from that's taken from the prophets so you know smashing them pulverizing them uh walking on them putting sometimes literally putting your your foot on the neck of the enemies that was sometimes actually done in sort of a ritualistic sort of way that's all traced back to genesis 3 15 so they were under my feet and then he uh he shifts as and this is very common in the psalms where to us it seems kind of disjointed because you'll like if we're talking if we're writing a prayer for instance we almost always address it exclusively in second person you you you you you the psalms the psalms don't seem to be bound by that same kind of rule because they'll shift from talking directly to god to talking about god in the same in the same

psalm often from one verse to another so sometimes they'll just be describing who god is or praising God for who he is, and then they'll shift to a second-person address. So here there's a shift. You talking, David talking to God. You made my enemies turn their backs to me. Literally, it's the idea of turning the nape of the neck. So they turned the nape, the backside of the neck to me. In other words, they retreated. They turned their back and they ran. Those who hated me and i destroyed them they looked but there was none to save they uh you know they they were looking around for somebody to rescue them but they they had no one and then in the second part of verse 42 as is typical of poetry there's a more specific there's a closer specification of

exactly what he means so who were they looking toward or what were they looking toward he says they looked but there was none to save they cried to yahweh they cried to the lord but he did not answer them it's always struck me as one of the most interesting verses well from the psalms this this is repeated in psalm 18 but also here in this particular psalm because you don't have a whole lot of instances in the scriptures of people actually crying out or praying to god and then were told explicitly he didn't answer them yeah well this is this is one of the few times in the in the scriptures where you have people who believe in yahweh pursuing a guy who also believes in yahweh and you have you know this this is if he's you know assuming he's talking

about saul and his and his armies and this kind of stuff uh that would be who they would call out to uh as as day as the tables turned and all of a sudden you know david was beaten all over their head and uh and uh god god picked a side yeah yeah i was picturing yeah two teams are going out to play they both pray beforehand yes give us victory what who's who's god are gonna listen to well i mean for me it's a good reminder that just because people cry out to the one true god does not necessarily mean that he's happy with their prayer because they could be you know like in the case of saul they he might be praying to god to give him victory over david but god's like uh no that's not the way this works i'm i'm not the one that you should be asking for for victory over the one that

i have indeed chosen and and what he does in this song is he says they cried out to the lord uh he didn't answer them and it is sort of because god was not on their side i beat them fine as dust i beat them fine as the dust of the earth i crushed them and stamped them down like the mire of the streets you're like good grief man i know yeah this whole scene opens up in my mind yeah picturing him stomping through this wet street like an old western town that has no sidewalks but yeah he's crushing them stamping them like mud or or mire in the on a rainy rainy muddy stream it's a it almost seems like well god didn't answer them and that's all the permission i needed to just trample the heck out of these people wipe them out yeah which is you

know that's this is uh what happened god gave david that that kind of victory even though i mean this is a bit hyperbolic because if you're thinking about saul david actually never engaged saul in battle no i mean he engaged plenty of other people in battle but he didn't engage he engaged Saul in battle. He avoided that at all costs, in fact. And then he shifts here in these next few verses to not so much talking about fellow Israelites who were opposed to him as the peoples who were surrounding him. So he says, you deliver me from the strife with my people. Okay, so that's talking about the people of Israel. But then he shifts, he says, you kept me as head of the nations so not the israelites but the the goyim as we call them in hebrew the

anytime you see almost every time you see goyim that's the plural it's in reference to the gentile nations so the non-israelite nations so you kept me as head of the nations which is a fascinating description and it's suggestive of what we see in a lot of places in this psalm where david is speaking with a prophetic voice so he's he's talking yes about the victories that god gave him but he's also talking prophetically about the victories that god is going to give to the son of david because if anyone is really the head of the nations the head of the gentiles it's not so much david i mean yeah david did receive the homage of certain gentile nations surrounding him which we've talked about in first and second samuel but if there's anybody who's really the head of the

nations it's not david but it's the messiah yes he's the one who rules over the rules over the nations people whom i've not known served me foreigners come cringing to me as soon as they heard of me they obeyed me there's a word play by the way in hebrew in that last phrase they heard of me and they obeyed me we've talked plenty of times before about how in the old testament hebrew doesn't have a word for obey it means to listen to the voice of so literally this would be something like uh at the hearing of the ear they heard me or they listened to me in other words when they heard me they they heard me yeah like it's actually weird that they would translate this this way that especially with poetry like this does this not like poetically work much

better just say as soon as they heard me they listened to me like heard and listened is is the isn't this what it was he's saying that like they they heard and they listened they they received it yeah that would make a lot more sense and it would and by doing that it would bring out a little more clearly in english that this is a word play they're both based upon the root shema like the shema here oh israel the lord our god the lord is one so as soon as they shema with the ear as soon as they heard with the ear, they shema'd me. They listened to me, which is translated here as obeyed me. But that's the idea. When they hear, they listen. Anyone that had a mother in the South knows what this is like. Your mother knows that there's a difference between hearing and listening

because my mother made it very clear to me many times that she would be talking. And of course, i would hear her and then she would ask me this question are you listening to me and i know that no mistaking what that means and i know she's not asking if i heard her she's asking something different yes she's not asking about your ear but she's asking about your will right are you are you are you gonna do what i say so he wraps up this uh this particular short section in verse 46 foreigners lose heart and come shaking or trembling out of their out of the fortresses. So this is an expansion of the horizon that David has put before us to where it's not just his victory over his own adversaries within the kingdom of Israel, but also his

victory and his sovereignty over the nations that are surrounding him. And because this happened in a small sort of way in David's life, it happened then in a much more, not just expansive, but also cosmopolitan way in in the life of in the life of jesus now when you when i read psalms like this or other psalms in actual book of psalms that are by david that talk about military victories then i just do an immediate translation in my mind theologically to understand this is not secondarily but actually primarily the son of david speaking so the way that i the way that i read and pray the psalms is yes david wrote this but the primary voice is that of jesus he's the son of david who's speaking and then david prays in and through him and then also we

pray in and through him so all of second samuel 23 yeah it's written by david but it's also written by the spirit the spirit of christ and so christ is speaking through david and he is describing what happened in david's life but also prophetically what is to happen in the ministry of Christ. And this military language of conquest and trampling down foes is all the Old Testament way of describing the victory that we have in Christ. Now, Jesus didn't go around engaging in the work of a soldier, in the work of a warrior, but his ministry was constantly a confrontation with evil. So it was a militaristic ministry in the sense that every place that Jesus went, he confronted evil, he confronted the effects of evil, he confronted the effects of sin.

And so you can picture his healing ministry as warfare, or his casting out of demons for sure as warfare. So he engages, all his years of ministry are an ongoing battle against the forces of evil, the forces of darkness on the battlefield of Judea. And of course, this all comes to a climax on on the cross the the final the final battle if you will so when you read sections like this from the old testament and you're wondering how do we deal with this militaristic very violent kind of language and think of that in the ministry of jesus well that's the way you do it you understand the ministry of jesus as true warfare the same kind of warfare that paul talks about in ephesians when he talks about our battle not being against flesh and blood

up against the rulers, against the powers of darkness. Okay, wrapping up these last five verses or so. He shifts then from all of this military language to praise. He says, the Lord lives, and blessed be my rock, and exalted be my God, the rock of my salvation. Same kind of language with which he began the psalm, heaping up these images of who God is, especially this idea of steadfastness and stability in god being our rock our rock of our salvation well you know in the old testament this isn't the only place this is this is mentioned where you have this sort of the lord lives language which might be kind of weird you know like we're like you know yahweh is alive you know that that's like well i would hope so right like our god's not dead and

you're like well that's good but that phrase the lord lives hits a little bit different when you know about the death and then the resurrection of christ right so like yes whenever i see that that phrase in the old testament where the lord lives i'm immediately taken to like the empty tomb and you're almost immediately taken to he is risen he is risen indeed it's almost like god has always sort of set that up to where the thing that's important to know one of the things that's important to know about god is that he he's alive and that that's not that's sort of like a a given unless you have a god who is actually going to die and then it becomes very important to say he's alive because he's conquered death yeah that's great so psalm 47 is sort of a uh a

resurrection sunday oh yeah for sure the lord lives just add jesus in there the lord jesus lives yes and blessed be blessed be my rock yeah what a great what a great uh point then he shifts in verse 48 to uh kind of sum up what he was talking about earlier with regard to his victory over enemies the god who gave me vengeance and brought down peoples under me who brought me out from my enemies you exalted me above those who rose up against me you delivered me from men of violence so he's blessing god in this this this lead up to his conclusion because god has done all of these things for him he's delivered him he's given him victory he's made him as head of these these peoples and then verses 50 and 51 are the last part of the psalm for this i will praise

you, O Lord, among the nations. That's another thing that we see often in the prophets, as well as in the Psalms, this idea that the praise that an Israelite sings is not, as it were, restricted by the borders of Israel. We have this praise leaking out, if you will, into the nations. I'll praise you among the nations. And of course, David did this quite literally, because he went to live among the philistines yeah he was actually in the land of the nations in the philistines uh presumably he didn't just simply shut up about the lord he continued to talk about him to praise him and so he actually did this literally among the the philistines in his own life yeah this this almost reads like a uh like i am not i am not ashamed of the good news right the kind of thing

where like when he says he'll do it among the nations is that he will give god the credit for his victory to other people outside of israel like with other people are asking how did how how did you win all these mighty victories that he he won't be taking credit for it there in those places either the people say well it was it was the lord yeah i'll tell you it wasn't by the god of the philistines or by the god of the edomites it was by the god of israel that i that i did this And then verse 51, it's sort of funny in the Hebrew. The English has great salvation he brings to his king. Literally in the Hebrew, it would be something like, he makes big salvations to his king.

Something along those lines in a way, but great salvations or big salvations he brings to his king. We might paraphrase it something like, great acts of salvation are what he gives to his king. and he shows this is another one of our favorite words hesed he shows steadfast love or hesed this uh loyalty or this uh this this love divine love to his anointed and that word anointed as you probably suspected is the word mashiach from which we get our word messiah so he gives big salvations to his king and he shows hesed to his messiah and then we have this specification in the last line of the psalm to david and his seed offspring forever that's a that's a great way to end so he's he's giving these great salvations to his king he's showing hesed love to his messiah

which of course is is redolent of two things david of course is anointed david is the king yes and he's even specified to david but then it ends with a focus upon his seed the seed that was promised back in second samuel chapter 7 when god said he would build david a house uh so it's not just a david but it's to his seed to the true messiah to the true king he shows this salvation and this steadfast love forever. Yeah, it's almost as if David is saying that he brings this great, this big, this tower of salvation. I've seen this translated that way as well. He brings that to his king, and he shows this chesed, this steadfast love,

to his to his anointed to david because of his offspring forever yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely and then and this is a couple things so i think we mentioned at the very beginning of this chapter uh in the last episode that there's a lot of parallels between what david sings about here and then what hannah sings about in first samuel 2 the way the the two books actually begin so they're bookended by poetry. And Hannah herself ends her canticle by mentioning the king and the Messiah. And that's the same thing that we have here at the end of David. So he mentions the king and he mentions the Messiah. So that's one more pairing of these two. That's the first point. Second point is that David ending this way then sets us up for what is to follow in chapter 23,

because we're not finished with poetry. We're done with this particular psalm. It does end at the end of 22. But then what we're going to see in chapter 23 that we're going to do next in what's called the last words of David is a focus upon this anointed, a focus upon this messianic king.

So it's a great tie-in with the song of Hannah, and it's also a great segue into chapter 23. So let's jump into chapter 23. Now, this is not nearly as long. That was 51 verses in 2 Samuel 22. So we're not about to jump into a lengthy psalm. However, it's only seven verses. But what it lacks in length, it makes up for in depth.

There is a lot here. In fact, I'm holding in my hands right now one of the volumes of Luther's works. It's volume 15, and it's really got three sections to it. Ecclesiastes' Song of Solomon, so what Luther has to say about those two books. But then about the last hundred pages of this volume is the last words of David, 2 Samuel 23, 1-7. And Luther wrote this later in life. I can't remember. It was in the early 1540s, maybe? Anyway, it was later in his life.

and uh you you if you know if you've read some stuff by by by later luther you know that you're gonna you're gonna get a can kind of get the raw very very blunt luther not that he's not blunt the rest of his life but you certainly get some some very blunt language here but one of the great things i love about it is that when when martin luther expounds upon these seven verses i mean he it's like pedal to the metal full Christology he's holding he's holding nothing back so if you happen to have that volume check it out

I find it extremely extremely insightful he approaches these last words of David basically asking how is every single section of this all about Christ and so we'll of course bring some of that out as we work away

this is a great question to ask and someone should do a podcast where they just tackle the whole Old Testament asking that question. I've been thinking about that for a while. It's a Christ-centered approach to the Old Testament. Man, somebody needs to do a podcast like that. Someone needs to do it.

Somebody needs to. It should be like 40 minutes long too. Yes. That'd be ideal. That is the Old Testament length to be. So we start out with the title. it is called the last words of david it's sort of a double entendre there because so in hebrew last acharon mean it can mean last as it's translated here but it also means can refer

literally to what's behind you and i've talked about this multiple times but in hebrew the idea of the future is what's behind you because you can't see it so you always walk into the future facing backward because you can't see what's there so this is yes it's the last words of david but at the same time kind of built into that word is this is what's coming this is what's part of the this what's coming in the in the future so these words are they're prophetic of what is to what is to come or more specifically he who he who is to come now the esv starts out the oracle of David, the son of Jesse, which, I mean, you could translate it that way. In Hebrew, it's na'um.

Na'um is a word that very frequently occurs in the prophets. So anytime you're reading your English translations and you'll have something like, thus declares the Lord in the prophets, and you find that all over the place, that's the word na'um. So na'um is translated here as oracle. It can be translated declaration. It can be translated as a verb, so declares. but it's the marker of prophetic speech.

That's my point. So thus declares David or the oracle of David. In other words, David is speaking here, not just as a king. He's not speaking here as just the son of Jesse, but he's about to engage in prophetic speech. And of course, this is not surprising. Peter calls David a prophet in his Pentecost sermon when he's talking about Psalm 16.

so the oracle or the we might even kind of expand that to the prophetic pronouncement the prophetic oracle of david the son of jesse the oracle same same word there the oracle or the declaration of the man now i'm going to read the sv who was raised on high the anointed of the god of jacob the sweet psalmist of israel this can be translated differently than that so So instead of the oracle, the man who was raised on high, that verb that's translated as raised on high, which is koum, is used in other sections to mean something like set up or confirmed or ratified or something like that. So to quote Luther that I referred to earlier, he renders that verse this way. The oracle of the man who was assured or it was confirmed of the Messiah of the God of Jacob. which I think is a perfect rendering here.

So David is saying, I'm the guy, I'm the son of Jesse, yes, but I'm also the guy who was given the assurance, who was given the promise, the declaration of God, concerning who? The anointed, that is to say, the Messiah of the God of Jacob. So David immediately wants us to think in terms of not just himself, but of what he's about to say concerning the anointed one, the anointed one of God.

It's interesting that even at this point, so David's reputation as like this sort of songwriter and stuff is pretty concrete. It wasn't like they went and discovered a book of songs after he died. And they were like, man, this guy really could write some songs. He is, I mean, he was sort of the, he was the hymn writer for the nation, right, for the people of Israel. I mean, they had, you know, before David, there were songs. I mean, they had the Song of Moses and, you know, like different things and stuff. But David was like putting out a hymnal, you know, and he was he was writing stuff. And you have to believe that these were things that were shared with the people, that people knew these things.

Yeah, he wasn't just kind of keeping his own little private book of poetry. No, he was actually writing hymns, writing psalms for for the nation of Israel. And they weren't just his, as it says here, he's a sweet psalmist of Israel. So they became public property, as it were, church property, we might say. uh he's he's writing that which is to be in the mouths of of the people of god and they concern this anointed one this this messiah yeah and that it stays that way the psalms of david are the songs that israel sings to this day like i mean like that's that that's their songbook yeah and it's the it's the it's the foundation upon which every hymn or song has that's ever been written

is found at least the ones that are worth their salt are but you can you can really think of the millions of hymns that have been written throughout the course of the centuries all of them are nothing more than an expansion or extrapolation or a summation of what we already had 150 songs yeah i said i was talking to someone about that they were like you know like man israel like really viewed david as like their greatest king and everything was that it and you know but But why is that? They had kings that weren't as, you know, messy as David. Like, why about Josiah?

Or maybe Hezekiah can be your greatest king or whatever. They seem, like, better. It's like, yeah, but they didn't write all the songs that, like, the whole nation sings. I really think that's part of it is that he put all these words of victory and lament and crying out to God for the Messiah. He put all those words in their mouths. It really makes him different. Yeah. Yeah.

so if you if you add up all of the psalms of david i mean we're looking at half of the psalter yeah yeah you've so you've got 150 psalms and when you look at any hymn book today yeah there might be a whole lot of of hymns by uh well one of the wesley's uh was it charles charles wesley was the hymn writer yeah yeah so one of the wesley brothers anyway you know i might have a bunch in there and of course the guy wrote thousands of thousands of hymns but you're not to find him to war half of the hymns right by wesley right but but when you open up the look of psalms that's what you find uh so david was yeah he was a great warrior he was a great king uh but i mean his lasting impact was not ruling over israel or defeating the armies of the

philistines his lasting impact are in the psalms uh which he bequeathed to us uh many of which of course, are known by heart by my people still today. So the sweet psalmist of Israel. So verse 2, he makes explicit the fact that he is not speaking in his own person here. He's speaking by the Spirit of God. He says, the Spirit of the Lord, the Ruach Yahweh, the Spirit of Yahweh speaks by me. So this isn't just my poetic ruminations on where I'm at in life or something like that. This is me speaking by the Spirit.

It's very similar language to what Jesus quotes from Isaiah in his Nazareth sermon. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to do all these things. Same thing here. David is saying the Spirit of the Lord is going to use my mouth. His word, he goes on, his word is on my tongue. So in other words, pay attention, because what I'm about to utter is a prophecy given by God to the people of Israel. And normally, if you had someone say the word of the Lord is on my tongue, they're about to read Scripture. David is about to write Scripture, which is different.

But yeah, I mean, this is one of those cases where we know for sure that David knew for sure that what he was about to speak was not simply not something that he thought just was simply wise or helpful, but in fact, was Scripture itself. So the Spirit of the Lord speaks by me. His word is on my tongue. The God of Israel has spoken. The Rock of Israel has said to me, and I'll read the ESV here, When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, 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.

I would change a couple things here in that translation. So the beginning is fine. The God of Israel has spoken. The rock of Israel has said to me, but rather than having a colon and then when one rules, I would translate it something like this. So the rock of Israel has said to me, the one who rules righteously over men. So that this God of Israel, this rock, is the one who's doing the ruling. He's the ruler who rules righteously or justly over men. And then we have the same one repeated.

He's the one who rules in the fear of God. So the God of Israel speaks, this rock of Israel, which I would interpret as Christ, the Messiah. He's the one who then rules righteously over men. He's the one who rules in the fear of God. And then, and this is the part I really like in verse 4, he not only rules righteously and in the fear of God, but we have in verse 4 this unforgettable imagery of, it's lifted from nature, where he comes down. He dawns like the morning light. It's like that language of the day spring from on high.

So the very first fingers of dawn that begin to appear, the very first time that darkness begins to be dispelled, that's the day spring. And so the Messiah is coming down, or maybe we should say rising up like the dawning sun, like the morning light. And then he uses the other image of like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning so it's clear it's like a it's the image of springtime and you have the sun

shining dispelling the darkness it's a cloudless day and then he moves from the metaphors of light to vegetation like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth now all of this is there's a there's a ton packed into here and we'll pick some of this up in the next episode but a lot of this is actually going to be adopted by later prophets, especially when they talk about the Son of Righteousness that comes with healing in His wings, or again, that language of Dayspring that occurs in the Song of Zechariah. So they're going to use the image of the Son, this dawn, to describe who Christ is and what His work is going to accomplish. And He not only brings light, but He brings about this life, which is pictured here as grass

sprouting from the earth vegetation springing springing forth that that language of creation is very often used in prophets like isaiah to describe the messianic new creation in which you have grass and flowers and every tree sprouting from a dry dead earth because when the messiah comes as you said earlier dan he brings life the lord lives and so because he lives everything he touches also is going to live as well yeah it's it's great because you have a you have a king talking about when the when the true king comes it's going to be really great like all all of this good stuff is going to happen so these are the last you know the last words of david david is i think that you could read this and he'd be like okay so david's saying as a king

he's saying listen this is what happens when one rules justly over men ruling in the fear of lord but David is not talking about himself. Yeah, this isn't self-descriptive. No, he's saying as someone who did rule that when the righteous ruler comes, when the one who rules justly comes, it's going to be so much better than it is now. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's a John the Baptist move, right? I must decrease so that he must increase. Yeah, I mean, I'm just a mere earthly king, But let me tell you about the real king Here's what he is going to accomplish Yeah And I guess we'll leave it right there We're sort of in the middle of something

We didn't get quite as far into this one So we can do a little recap next time So it won't be as awkward But we are out of our Old Testament appropriate 40 minutes So we'll leave it there And pick it up next week Alright, see you then

We'll see you next week.