YHWH’s promises to David are so lavish that they often accrue the adjective ‘unconditional’. Declared primarily in the Bible’s two great histories of Israel (Deuteronomy-2 Kings and Chronicles-Nehemiah) and then reflected upon in the Psalms and Prophets, YHWH commits himself to David’s ‘house’ in seemingly open-ended manner.
The anticipated legation of the monarch from David to his son Solomon, as narrated in 1 Chronicles, provides one example:
Yet the LORD God of Israel chose me (David) from all my ancestral house to be king over Israel forever; for he chose Judah as leader, and in the house of Judah my father’s house, and among my father’s sons he took delight in making me king over all Israel. And of all my sons, for the LORD has given me many, he has chosen my son Solomon to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of the LORD over Israel. He said to me, ‘It is your son Solomon who shall build my house and my courts, for I have chosen him to be a son to me, and I will be a father to him. I will establish his kingdom forever if he continues resolute in keeping my commandments and my ordinances, as he is today.
Biblical scholars sometimes distinguish the ‘unconditional’ statements of this ‘Davidic covenant’ from those that declare or imply that conditions exist. The passage cited above would fit just over the line in the ‘conditional’ camp. At an extreme, this distinction is said to point out competing ideologies with regard to David’s lineage, monarchical prerogatives and even the status of his capital, Jerusalem/Zion.
The discerning reader will neither short the permanence of this covenantal language nor ignore the exhortation to ‘obeying my commandments’ that suggests that the arrangement’s terms are not set in stone.
In 1 Chronicles, David moves quickly to this summons to his remarkable son:
And you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve him with single mind and willing heart; for the LORD searches every mind, and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will abandon you forever. Take heed now, for the LORD has chosen you to build a house as the sanctuary; be strong, and act.
The Bible’s paradigmatic moments characteristically resist reduction to just one axis. Faced with the enormous task not only to rule Israel in David’s retreating shadow but also to construct the ‘house for YHWH’, Solomon is urged in the strongest terms to seek YHWH on the premise that he makes himself discoverable to those who energetically desire his company.
The assurance of YHWH’s commitment to Solomon and those who would follow after him in David’s chair is not fronted as reason for a casual approach to the challenge of serving YHWH. To the contrary, it undergirds the threat-tinged call to ‘be strong and act’.
Relational concreteness, when all eyes are open to its matrix of privilege and responsibility, does that.
Canter Bridge 
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