‏ 2 Samuel 22:50-51

2Sa 22:50-51 50  Therefore will I praise Thee, O Jehovah, among the nations,

And sing praise to Thy name. 51  As He who magnifies the salvation of His king,

And showeth grace to His anointed,

To David, and his seed for ever.

The grace which the Lord had shown to David was so great, that the praise thereof could not be restricted to the narrow limits of Israel. With the dominion of David over the nations, there spread also the knowledge, and with this the praise, of the Lord who had given him the victory. Paul was therefore perfectly justified in quoting the verse before us (2Sa 22:50) in Rom 16:9, along with Deu 32:43 and Psa 117:1, as a proof that the salvation of God was intended for the Gentiles also. The king whose salvation the Lord had magnified, was not David as an individual, but David and his seed for ever-that is to say, the royal family of David which culminated in Christ. David could thus sing praises upon the ground of the promise which he had received (2Sa 7:12-16), and which is repeated almost verbatim in the last clause of 2Sa 22:51. The Chethib מגדיל is the Hiphil participle מגדּיל, according to Ps. 18:51; and the Keri מגדּול, “tower of the fulness of salvation,” is a singular conjecture.  The psalm of thanksgiving, in which David praised the Lord for all the deliverances and benefits that he had experienced throughout the whole of his life, is followed by the prophetic will and testament of the great king, unfolding the importance of his rule in relation to the sacred history of the future. And whilst the psalm may be regarded (2 Samuel 22) as a great hallelujah, with which David passed away from the stage of life, these “last words” contain the divine seal of all that he has sung and prophesied in several psalms concerning the eternal dominion of his seed, on the strength of the divine promise which he received through the prophet Nathan, that his throne should be established for ever (2 Samuel 7). These words are not merely a lyrical expansion of that promise, but a prophetic declaration uttered by David at the close of his life and by divine inspiration, concerning the true King of the kingdom of God. “The aged monarch, who was not generally endowed with the gift of prophecy, was moved by the Spirit of God at the close of his life, and beheld a just Ruler in the fear of God, under whose reign blessing and salvation sprang up for the righteous, and all the wicked were overcome. The pledge of this was the eternal covenant which God had concluded with him” (Tholuck: die Propheten and ihre Weissagungen, p. 166). The heading “these are the last words of David” serves to attach it to the preceding psalm of thanksgiving.

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