What Does 2 Samuel 7:7 Mean?
In all the places where I have walked with all the children of Israel, I spoke a word with any of the tribes of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, Why do you not build me a house of cedars?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
In all the places wherein I have walked with all the children of Israel spake I a word with any of the tribes of Israel, whom I commanded to feed my people Israel, saying, Why build ye not me an house of cedar?THE KEY
The leaders are charged to tend the people, while God says he never asked them to build him a cedar house.
THE MEANING
God’s presence is pictured as moving among the people, and leadership as tending them. A cedar house is not presented as God’s need; the verse turns attention to the people in whose midst God moves.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
God’s presence or approval depends on a grand sacred building.
THE ROOT
לִרְעוֹת
lirʿot
GROWS FROM
רעה
To pasture or tend a flock.
The word rendered “feed” is לִרְעוֹת (lirʿot), to pasture or tend a flock; the same root names both the shepherd and the pasture. The leaders’ charge is therefore a form of care for living people, while the cedar house is something God says he never requested.
ALSO GROWS
roʿeh: Shepherd; one who tends a flock.
רֹעֶה
This branch makes the leaders’ assigned role concrete: they are to shepherd the people.
mirʿeh: Pasture; a place where a flock feeds.
מִרְעֶה
This branch shows the root extending from the act of tending to the provision and place that sustain the flock.
THE PATTERN
God’s presence is among people and exceeds the structures built to honor him.
And let them make me a set-apart place, that I may pitch my tent among them.But will God truly settle on the earth? Behold, the heavens and the heavens of the heavens cannot hold you; how much less this house that I have built?Yet the Highest does not settle in what is made by hands, as the prophet says.THE THREAD
But will God truly settle on the earth? Behold, the heavens and the heavens of the heavens cannot hold you; how much less this house that I have built?Solomon uses the same word for “house” as the cedar house in this verse, then asks whether any house could contain God. That question opens the cedar-house image further: a structure may be built for God, but it cannot enclose the presence that moves among the people.
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