Week 18 1 Chronicles
One of the reasons I read-through is because I figure the whole bible is worth reading. Which means I’m starting with a kind of Uniform Equivalency Rule that says it’s-all-valuable.
That rule is balanced off with another one: the Uniform Non-Equivalency Rule that says some parts are more valuable.
I use both rules. Everything is valuable and there’s also comparative value among all of them.
Anyway I was thinking about that while I was reading the Lord’s promise to David in seventeen because that chapter breaks the Uniform Equivalency Rule for me. It seems really important. Maybe more important than any other chapter in the book.
The Lord promised David a number of things – I counted about a dozen. I can’t guarantee that number but however many there are they break down into three categories – promises about David’s own near-future, promises about Solomon in the middle-future, and promises about David’s dynasty in the distant-future. The forecast for David’s distant-future has no expiry date: your dynasty and your kingdom will continue for all time before me, and your throne will be secure forever.
To be true a prophecy has to come true. So a bible-reader is going to be looking for a line of Davidic DNA travelling down through the years to see whether an ancestor of David continued a kingdom of some kind that has lasted right down to 2021.
Note: quote from 2 Samuel 7:16 (NLT). The two versions of the promise are in 1 Chronicles 17:3-14 and 2 Samuel 7:8-17.