Now these be the last words of David — not his last spoken words (1 Kings 2:1-9 has those) but his last oracle, set by the book beside the song of chapter 22 as the second of two poems that close the reign. The form, David the son of Jesse said... said, is the form of Balaam's oracles (Numbers 24:3, 15), and marks what follows as prophecy rather than prayer. Four titles climb: the son of Jesse — the farmer's boy; the man who was raised up on high — some read the Hebrew as raised up by the Most High, and the study notes both; the anointed of the God of Jacob; and the sweet psalmist of Israel — literally, perhaps, the pleasant one of the songs of Israel.

The study takes the four titles as the book's own summary of what David was: low-born, lifted, anointed, and a singer. The last is the one the church has kept; more of the Psalter bears his name than any other, and this verse is the Old Testament's warrant for calling him the psalmist. Readers should note the order of the titles, which is the order of grace: what he was by birth, what God did, what God made him, and what he gave back. Nothing of the warrior or the king is in the list; the sword is left to the mighty men in verse 8.

The Spirit of the LORD spake by me, and his word was in my tongue. This is the plainest claim in the Old Testament of a psalmist to inspiration, and the New Testament takes it at its word: David himself said by the Holy Ghost (Mark 12:36); the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake (Acts 1:16); the Holy Ghost... saying... in David (Hebrews 4:7). The study notes that the claim is made for what follows — the oracle of verses 3-7 — and that the apostles extended it to the psalms; readers who want to know what inspiration meant to the writers of Scripture have this verse and 2 Peter 1:21, holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

The verse is also a word about how the Spirit works: by me, in my tongue. The word was God's and the tongue was David's — the shepherd's images, the fugitive's fears, the king's failures are all in the psalms, and so is the Spirit. Verse 3 doubles the claim with the divine names, The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me — the Rock of 22:2-3 and 22:47 — so that the song and the last words are tied together by their name for God. The study notes that the man who claims the Spirit's word in verse 2 will confess in verse 5 that his house is not so with God. Inspiration did not mean a sinless house.

The oracle itself (vv. 3-4): He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. The Hebrew of verse 3 is compressed — more literally one ruling over men, just; ruling in the fear of God — and may be read as a requirement (must be, as the KJV) or as a description of a coming ruler (there shall be one who rules justly). The study gives both. On either reading the content is the same: a just ruler who fears God is to his people what a cloudless sunrise is to the land and sunshine after rain to grass.

Who is meant? David, measuring himself; Solomon, whose reign the book is about to open; every king of Judah after, measured by this and mostly found short (cf. Psalm 72:6, like rain upon the mown grass); and, the church has long said, the Son of David, the Sun of righteousness (Malachi 4:2), the bright and morning star (Revelation 22:16), the only ruler of men in whom the oracle is fulfilled without remainder. The study frames the last as the church's reading and finds it in the text's own grammar: verse 5 will say my house be not so, which means the ruler of verses 3-4 is not yet, and is looked for.

Although my house be not so with God. After Amnon, Absalom, Adonijah about to rise, and the roof of chapter 11, the old king says it plainly: his house is not the cloudless morning. Then the yet: he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure. This is the one place in the book where chapter 7 is called a covenant — Nathan's oracle used the words house and for ever but not this one; Psalm 89:3 and 28 use it, and here David does. Ordered in all things — arranged, set in array like a battle-line or a table; sure — kept, guarded. The study notes that the covenant is described by what God did, not by what David's house deserved.

For this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow. The last clause is difficult; it may mean that the promise has not yet sprouted — no just ruler of verse 3 has yet come of David's line — or, as some take the Hebrew, be a question: will he not make it to grow? The KJV's concession reads naturally with my house be not so. Either way the sense is that David rests everything on a covenant whose fruit he cannot see. Readers should hear the whole verse as the book's theology in one line: a failed house, a sure covenant, and a man whose all is in the second, not the first. Hebrews 13:20 will call the blood of Christ the blood of the everlasting covenant.

From the oracle to the roll of honour. These be the names of the mighty men whom David had — the list is paralleled in 1 Chronicles 11:10-47 with differences, and this verse is the hardest of them. The KJV's The Tachmonite that sat in the seat... the same was Adino the Eznite represents a Hebrew text that is widely thought damaged; Chronicles reads Jashobeam, an Hachmonite, the chief of the captains: he lifted up his spear against three hundred, and many take Adino the Eznite to be a garbled form of the words he lifted up his spear. The numbers differ too, eight hundred against three hundred. The study names the difficulty and asserts no solution.

The three (vv. 8-12): the first, whoever he was; Eleazar the son of Dodo, who fought until his hand was weary, and his hand clave unto the sword (v. 10), after the men of Israel were gone away; Shammah the son of Agee, who stood in the midst of a field of lentils (Chronicles has barley) when the people fled, and defended it (vv. 11-12). Twice the narrator adds the same clause — the LORD wrought a great victory (vv. 10, 12). The study notes that pattern: a man alone, an army fled, and the victory credited to God. These are the stories behind 22:30, by thee I have run through a troop.

Three of the thirty chief — not necessarily the three of verses 8-12; the text is not explicit — come to David in the harvest time unto the cave of Adullam (v. 13; 1 Samuel 22:1), with the Philistines in the valley of Rephaim (cf. 5:18) and a garrison in Bethlehem (v. 14). David longed, and said, as a man says a thing aloud without meaning it as an order, Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate! (v. 15) — the water of his boyhood. And the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water... and brought it to David. The study notes that the king did not send them; they went because he wished.

Nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the LORD. Verse 17 gives the reason: Be it far from me, O LORD... is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? Water bought at the risk of three lives was too costly for a man to drink and holy enough to be offered as a drink-offering (cf. Genesis 35:14). Readers have found here the best of David — a king who will not consume what his men risk their blood for — and have set it beside 24:24, neither will I offer... of that which doth cost me nothing. What costs others their blood is for God; what costs him nothing is not fit for God. Those two sentences, many have said, are the heart of worship.

Abishai, the brother of Joab (v. 18) comes first of a second three — chief among three, with his spear against three hundred, most honourable of three, yet he attained not unto the first three (v. 19). The numbers and rankings of verses 18-23 are not wholly clear, and the study does not force them. Then Benaiah the son of Jehoiada... of Kabzeel, the captain of the guard (8:18; 20:23), with three stories: two lionlike men of Moab — the Hebrew is two ariel of Moab, an obscure word that may mean champions or lion-like warriors, and the KJV's guess is as good as any; a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow; and an Egyptian.

He went down also and slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow — the strangest and most vivid line in the list: a pit, snow, a trapped lion, and a man who went down to it rather than leaving it. And he slew an Egyptian, a goodly man... he went down to him with a staff, and plucked the spear out of the Egyptian's hand, and slew him with his own spear (v. 21) — David and Goliath in miniature (1 Samuel 17:40, 51). David set him over his guard (v. 23). Benaiah will outlive the chapter: he stands with Solomon against Adonijah (1 Kings 1:38), carries out the king's sentences on Joab and Shimei (1 Kings 2:29-46), and takes Joab's place over the host.

The thirty (vv. 24-39) are mostly names, and the study honours them as names — men whose towns are recorded and whose deeds are not. The first is Asahel the brother of Joab (v. 24), dead since 2:23; the list therefore reaches back to the Hebron years and is not a roster of any single day. Many are from Judah and Benjamin; some are foreigners — Zelek the Ammonite (v. 37), Uriah the Hittite (v. 39), Ittai... of Gibeah (v. 29, not the Gittite of chapter 15). Eliam the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite stands in verse 34, and the study stops on him because of 11:3, where Bathsheba is the daughter of Eliam.

If the Eliam of this verse is the Eliam of 11:3 — the name is not common, and the text neither joins nor separates them — then Ahithophel was Bathsheba's grandfather, Uriah was his grandson by marriage and his fellow in the thirty, and his going over to Absalom (15:12) had a wound behind it. Many readers have drawn the line; the study offers it as a possibility that fits, not a fact the text states. What the verse does show without inference is that David's inner circle of soldiers and counsellors was one web of families, and that the sins of chapter 11 were committed inside it. Uriah, at the end of the list, was not a stranger to the king.

Uriah the Hittite: thirty and seven in all. The roll ends with the name the reader has been waiting for since chapter 11. The study notes it without over-reading: the Chronicles list (1 Chronicles 11:41) also has Uriah, and continues past him with other names, so his last place here may be the order of the source and nothing more. But the book of Samuel ends its list on him, and whatever the cause, the effect is that the last word of David's roll of honour is the name of the faithful soldier whom the king had killed. Readers may let the verse be what it is: a record, which keeps Uriah among the mighty men, and keeps his death in the reader's mind.

Thirty and seven in all. Counting the names in verses 8-39 gives thirty-one in the thirty, plus the three, Abishai and Benaiah; readers reach thirty-seven by counting Jashen or Joab, or by allowing that the thirty was a company whose number changed as men died and were replaced, as Asahel was. The study does not insist on an arithmetic the text does not give. What it notes is the shape of the chapter: it opens with the Spirit speaking by a king and ends with a Hittite's name; between are men who held a field, drew water, and went down into a pit. The covenant of verse 5 was kept by God, and the kingdom of verse 8 was held by these.