chapter, to his successor Solomon immediately before his death. Just as in the Chronicles, according to the peculiar plan of that work, there is no detailed description of the installation of David on the throne; so here the author of our books has omitted the account of this national diet, and the homage paid by the estates of the realm to the new king, as not being required by the purpose of his work, and has communicated the last personal admonitions and instructions of the dying king David instead.[1]
Verses 1-3
David's Last Instructions and Death. - 1Ki 2:1-4.
When David saw that his life was drawing to a close, he first of all admonished his son Solomon to be valiant in the observance of the commandments of God. “I go the way of all the world” (as in Jos 23:14), i.e., the way of death; “be strong and be a man,” - not “bear my departure bravely,” as Thenius supposes, but prove thyself brave (cf. 1Sa 4:9) to keep the commandments of the Lord. Just as in 1Sa 4:9 the object in which the bravery is to show itself is appended simply by the copula Vâv; so is it here also with וגו ושׁמרתּ. The phrase יי את־משׁמרת שׁמר, to keep the keeping of Jehovah, which so frequently occurs in the Thorah, i.e., to observe or obey whatever is to be observed in relation to Jehovah (cf. Gen 26:5; Lev 8:35; Lev 18:30, etc.), always receives its more precise definition from the context, and is used here, as in Gen 26:5, to denote obedience to the law of God in all its extent, or, according to the first definition, to walk in the ways of Jehovah. This is afterwards more fully expanded in the expression וגו חקּתין לשׁמר, to keep the ordinances, commandments, rights, and
- ↑ To refute the assertion of De Wette, Gramberg, and Thenius, that this account of the Chronicles arises from a free mode of dealing with the history, and an intention to suppress everything that did not contribute to the honour of David and his house, - an assertion which can only be attributed to their completely overlooking, not to say studiously ignoring, the different plans of the two works (the books of Kings on the one hand, and those of Chronicles on the other), - it will be sufficient to quote the unprejudiced and thoughtful decision of Bertheau, who says, in his Comm. on 1Ch 23:1 : “These few words (1Ch 23:1) give in a condensed form the substance of the account in 1 Kings 1, which is intimately bound up with the account of the family affairs of David in the books of Samuel and Kings, and therefore, according to the whole plan of our historical work, would have been out of place in the Chronicles.”
