▼There is no discrepancy, therefore, between the two different accounts; but the one supplements the other in a manner perfectly in harmony with the whole affair, - at the outset, a sacrifice consisting of one ox and one fatted calf; and at the close, one of seven oxen and seven rams. Consequently there is no reason for altering the text of the verse before us, as Thenius proposes, according to the senseless rendering of the lxx, καὶ ἦσαν μετ ̓ αὐτοῦ αἴροντες τὴν κιβωτὸν ἑπτὰ χοροί, καὶ θῦμα μόσχος καὶ ἄρνες (“with David there were bearers of the ark, seven choirs, and sacrifices of a calf and lambs”), which has also found its way into the Vulgate, though Jerome has rendered our Hebrew text faithfully afterwards (i.e., after the gloss, which was probably taken from the Itala, and inserted in his translation).

▼With regard to the historical authenticity of this promise, Tholuck observes, in his Prophets and their Prophecies (pp. 165-6), that “it can be proved, with all the evidence which is ever to be obtained in support of historical testimony, that David actually received a prophetic promise that his family should sit upon the throne for ever, and consequently an intimation of a royal descendant whose government should be eternal. Anything like a merely subjective promise arising from human combinations is precluded here by the fact that Nathan, acting according to the best of his knowledge, gave his consent to David’s plan of building a temple; and that it was not till afterwards, when he had been instructed by a divine vision, that he did the very opposite, and assured him on the contrary that God would build him a house.” Thenius also affirms that “there is no reason for assuming, as De Wette has done, that Nathan’s prophecies were not composed till after the time of Solomon;” that “their historical credibility is attested by Ps 89 (Psa 89:4, Psa 89:5, 20-38, and especially Psa 89:20), Psa 132:11-12, and Isa 55:3; and that, properly interpreted, they are also Messianic.” The principal evidence of this is to be found in the prophetic utterance of David in 2 Samuel 23, where, as is generally admitted, he takes a retrospective glance at the promise, and thereby attests the historical credibility of Nathan’s prophecy (Thenius, p. 245). Nevertheless, Gust. Baur maintains that “a closer comparison of this more elaborate and simple description (2 Samuel 7) with the brief and altogether unexampled last words of David, more especially with 2Sa 23:5, can hardly leave the slightest doubt, that the relation in which the chapter before us stands to these words, is that of a later expansion to an authentic prophetic utterance of the king himself.” For example, the distinct allusion to the birth of Solomon, and the building of the temple, which was to be completed by him, is said to have evidently sprung from a later development of the original promise after the time of Solomon, on account of the incongruity apparent in Nathan’s prediction between the ideal picture of the Israelitish monarchy and the definite allusion to Solomon’s building of the temple. But there is no such “incongruity” in Nathan’s prediction; it is only to be found in the naturalistic assumptions of Baur himself, that the utterances of the prophets contained nothing more than subjective and ideal hopes of the future, and not supernatural predictions. This also applies to Diestel’s opinion, that the section 2Sa 7:4-16 does not harmonize with the substance of David’s glorious prayer in 2Sa 7:18-29, nor the latter again with itself, because the advice given him to relinquish the idea of building the temple is not supported by any reasons that answer either to the character of David or to his peculiar circumstances, with which the allusion to his son would have been in perfect keeping; but the prophet’s dissuasion merely alludes to the fact that Jehovah did not stand in need of a stately house at all, and had never given utterance to any such desire. On account of this “obvious” fact, Diestel regards it as credible that the original dissuasion came from God, because it was founded upon an earlier view, but that the promise of the son of David which followed proceeded from Nathan, who no doubt looked with more favourable eyes upon the building of the temple. This discrepancy is also arbitrarily foisted upon the text. There is not a syllable about any “original dissuasion” in all that Nathan says; for he simply tells the king that Jehovah had hitherto dwelt in a tent, and had not asked any of the tribes of Israel to build a stately temple, but not that Jehovah did not need a stately house at all.