said unto me,
Thou shalt not build an house for My name, because thou hast been a man
of war, and hast shed blood;" and in the words of the Lord which,
according to 1 Chron. xxii. 8, David repeated to Solomon: "Thou hast
shed blood abundantly, and hast made great wars; thou shalt not build
an house unto My name, because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth
in My sight,"--a disclosure which David could have obtained only at a
later period, and as a supplement to the divine communication which had
been made to him through Nathan. For it is only after the revelation in
2 Sam. vii. that David had to carry on his most bloody wars. We must
not, by any means, entertain the idea that these words express anything
_blameworthy_ in David, and that the permission to build the temple was
refused to him on account of his personal unworthiness. David stood in
a closer relation to God than did Solomon. His wars were wars of the
Lord, 1 Sam. xxv. 28. It is in this light that David himself regarded
them; and that he was conscious of his being divinely commissioned for
them, is seen, _e.g._, from Ps. xviii.: it was the Lord who taught his
hands to war (ver. 35) and who gave him vengeance, and subdued the
people unto him, ver. 48. The passages 1 Chron. xxii. 8, xxvii. 3, do
not, in themselves, contain one reproachful word against David. On the
contrary, the words, _in My sight_, in the former of these passages,
rather lead us to suppose that David is, in his wars, to be considered
only as a servant of the Lord (_Michaelis_: "_In My sight_--_i.e._, who
am, as it were, the [Pg 135] highest judge, and the commander"). The
reason is rather of a symbolical character. How necessary soever, under
certain conditions, war may be for the kingdom of God,--as indeed the
Saviour also says that (in the first instance) He had not come to send
peace, but a sword,--it is after all only something accidental, and
rendered needful by human corruption. The real nature of the kingdom of
God is peace. Even in the Old Testament, the Lord of the Church appears
as the Prince of Peace, Is. ix. 5. According to Luke ix. 56, the Son of
Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. In order to
impress upon the mind this view of the nature and aim of the Church,
the Temple--the symbol of the Church--must not be built by David the
man of war, but by Solomon, the peaceful, the man of rest, 1 Chron.
xxii. 9.

Ver. 6. "_For I have not dwelt in any house from