Ver. 1. "_And it happened when the king sat in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies round about._ Ver. 2. _And the king said unto Nathan the prophet, See, now, I dwell in a house of cedar, and the ark of God dwelleth within curtains._" The question here is:--To what time is the occurrence to be assigned? The answer is:--To the time not long after David had obtained the dominion over all Israel. To this opinion we are led by the position which the report occupies in the Books both of Chronicles and of Samuel. The supposition is so very probable, that nothing short of very cogent reasons could induce us to abandon it. A narrative, in which David's accession to the throne is followed by the conquest of Jerusalem, and this by the building of his palace,--and this again by the bringing up of the ark of the covenant,--and this, still further, by David's anxiety for a fixed sanctuary, evidently agrees with the order in which these events followed each other. We can the less entertain any doubt concerning it, because we are expressly told, that the wars and victories of David reported in chap. viii. were subsequent to what is reported in chap. vii.; compare viii. 1. That the conquest of Jerusalem and the [Pg 132] building of his palace belong to the period soon after his accession to the throne, is both evident, and generally acknowledged; but that David's anxiety for a fixed sanctuary was awakened in him soon after the completion of his palace, is expressly stated in 1 Chron. xvii. 1. Instead of כי ישב in ver. 1 of our passage, we find there כאשר ישב, "when," or "as soon as" he dwelt. We cannot well think of any later period, as David's zeal for the building of the house of the Lord was closely connected with the question regarding the duration of his own family, which was so readily suggested by the fate of Saul, and which must necessarily have engaged his attention at a very early period. If he obtained the divine sanction for the building of the temple, that question also was thereby answered. _Further_,--It appears from ver. 12, that Solomon was not yet born at the time when David received the promise. The circumstance, too, that there are so many allusions to it in the Psalms of David, proves that this promise had been already given to him at the beginning of his reign.--One circumstance only has been adduced against assigning to it so early a period, viz., that the event is here placed within the time when the Lord had given David rest from all his enemies round about. But there is not one word which affirms that this rest was a definitive one; while, on the other hand, the contrary is alluded to by the circumstance that the Books of Chronicles make no mention at all of David's rest from his enemies, and is distinctly indicated by viii. 1. In 1 Chron. xiv. 17 it is said, after the account of David's victory over the Philistines (on which event the Books of Samuel report previous to chap. vii., viz. in v.