David's zeal for the house of the Lord is thus acknowledged (compare Ps. cxxxii. 1), and so also is the correctness of his supposition, that the building of the fixed temple is intimately [Pg 134] connected with his being raised to be ruler over Israel. The first answer of Nathan remains correct; it is only more distinctly and closely defined and modified. David is to build the house,--not, however, in his own person, but in his seed, and after the Lord has begun to fulfil His promise, that He would make him an house. But why was it that David himself was not permitted to build the house to the Lord? In this passage we obtain no answer. In Solomon's message to Hiram (1 Kings v. 17) an external reason only is stated--viz., that, by his numerous wars, David had been prevented from building a house to the Lord. There was a deeper reason than this; but the heathen could not comprehend it. It is contained in the words which, according to 1 Chron. xxviii. 3, David spoke to the people: "And God 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