1 Chronicles 29:16

David’s prayer comes at the close of a great day of giving. He had long gathered materials for the house of the LORD (1 Chronicles 22:1–5), knowing that God had given the building of it to Solomon, because David had shed much blood and made great wars (1 Chronicles 22:8). He then gave from his own treasure (1 Chronicles 29:2–5), the leaders and the people followed, and “with perfect heart they offered willingly to the LORD”, so that the people rejoiced and David rejoiced with great joy (1 Chronicles 29:6–9). The word “Wherefore” ties David’s praise to that giving. A day like this could easily have become a matter for pride, and David turns every eye to the God who made it possible.

He blesses the LORD “before all the congregation”. As king he leads his people in worship as well as in government, and his praise gathers the tribes into one act of thanks just as the kingdom is about to pass to Solomon. Around Israel, kings were often treated as gods or as their representatives. David, at the height of his power, places himself and his whole nation beneath the one true King.

The verb bârak, to bless, runs both ways in Scripture. When God blesses people he gives them good things. When people bless God, as David does here, they give him adoration, praise and thanks, declaring his goodness and his worth, often bowing or kneeling as they do it. David first blesses the LORD and then speaks to him directly: “Blessed be thou.”

Verse 11 is the height of David’s praise, and it gathers five words to say what belongs to the LORD. The greatness, gᵉdûwlâh, is his magnitude and preeminence, a stature beyond any earthly king. The power is his might. The glory is his splendour and honour. The word the KJV renders “victory”, netsach, is most often a word of long duration, usually translated “continually”, and it also speaks of eminence and glory, so that the KJV gives it as “strength” and “victory” in other places. What David gives to God with it is a preeminence that lasts. The majesty, hôwd, is splendour and royal dignity, the honour that belongs to a king.

The reason follows at once: “for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine.” Everything in creation, seen and unseen, belongs to God. “The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1). This truth holds the whole prayer together. Kings and people hold what they have under God, and so the gold and silver gathered for the temple was his before anyone brought it.

“Thine is the kingdom, O LORD.” The reigning king confesses that the kingdom is God’s. David’s throne is held under the true King, who “hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all” (Psalm 103:19). Earthly kingdoms rise and fall, while God’s dominion is universal and everlasting. Daniel foretells a kingdom the God of heaven will set up, “which shall never be destroyed” (Daniel 2:44), and Nebuchadnezzar came to praise the God “whose dominion is an everlasting dominion” (Daniel 4:34–35). The worship of heaven gives the same answer, declaring the Lord worthy to receive glory and honour and power, because he created all things (Revelation 4:11).

“And thou art exalted as head above all.” God stands above every authority, power and creature, and all of them answer to him. This was a lesson for Solomon and the people as the crown passed from one king to the next: kingship in Israel was stewardship under the divine King.

Verse 12 brings God’s greatness down to the gifts people prize most. “Both riches and honour come of thee.” The word for honour, kâbôwd, means glory, honour and splendour, and it can also mean wealth. Here it is the standing and esteem a person or nation has. Among the nations, riches and honour were taken as marks of divine favour or of a king’s own power, and David names God as the one who gives them. The wise man says the same: “By humility and the fear of the LORD are riches, and honour, and life” (Proverbs 22:4).

“Thou reignest over all.” The verb mâshal means to rule, to have dominion. God rules every nation and every circumstance as well as Israel, and his rule is active government.

Twice David says “in thine hand”. The word yâd, hand, is used in Scripture for power, means and control, and it can mark the one through whom something is done. In God’s hand are “power and might”, a pair that joins kôach, strength or capacity, with gĕbûwrâh, strength shown in action and valour, so that together they cover all that God is able to do. In his hand it is also “to make great”, gâdal, to raise someone up and give success and standing, and “to give strength unto all”, châzaq, to make strong, to enable and sustain. Isaiah says of the same God, “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength” (Isaiah 40:29).

David and the people had worked hard and given much, and this verse places that effort where it belongs. The ability to work, the means to give and the outcome of it all come from God. Paul sets our work and God’s work side by side in the same way: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12–13). “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (Romans 11:36).

“Now therefore” draws the conclusion of all David has just said. Because God is great, because everything is his, and because every gift and every strength come from his hand, the right answer is thanks and praise.

“Our God” is ʼĕlôhîym, the ordinary Hebrew name for God. It is plural in form, and when it names the true God it is a plural of majesty, usually with singular verbs. With “our” David speaks for the whole assembly, and “we thank thee” is the voice of the nation.

Two verbs carry the worship. The first, yâdâh, means to give thanks, to praise and to confess, and its root is linked with holding out the hand, as in worship. It is open, spoken acknowledgment of what God has done. The second, hâlal, comes from the idea of shining or being clear, and so means to celebrate, to boast in and to praise. It is joyful, public praise that makes much of God’s greatness.

They praise his “glorious name”. In Scripture a name, shem, stands for the person himself, so God’s name is his revealed character, his reputation and his presence among his people: his holiness, power, faithfulness and covenant love. Thanks answers what God has done, praise of his name answers who he is, and David brings both. The psalms join them in the same way: “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name” (Psalm 100:4), and “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised” (Psalm 145:3).

“But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort?” David is a powerful king over a prosperous nation, and he is astonished. He gives the credit away from himself and from his people, ʻam, the nation gathered as one body. The word behind “be able”, kôach, is strength, capacity or means, and David confesses that even the strength to give came from God. Their generosity on that scale, and their gladness in it, were God’s gift.

The word for offering willingly, nâdab, speaks of a gift given freely and of one’s own accord, the generous gift of a noble spirit. Israel’s freewill offerings, nedavot, were voluntary gifts given beyond the tithes and sacrifices the law required, and the people had given in this spirit.

Then comes the reason, in words that have been spoken over offerings ever since: “for all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.” The Hebrew for “of thine own” is literally “of thy hand”, the same yâd. Here is the wonder of giving to God. The people truly gave, and what they gave was his already, a grateful return of what he had first supplied.

David says it again in verse 16, speaking of the whole heap of treasure in front of him: “all this store that we have prepared to build thee an house for thine holy name cometh of thine hand, and is all thine own.” The word for store, hâmôwn, can mean a noise or tumult, a multitude, or an abundance, and here it is the abundance of wealth gathered for the temple. “We have prepared” uses kûwn, to set up, establish or make ready, and David honestly owns the labour and planning that went into the gathering. The purpose was God’s own glory, a house “for thine holy name”. Then he says two things about the treasure: it came from God’s hand, and it remains God’s own. God says the same of himself: “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10–12), and “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts” (Haggai 2:8).

This makes giving an act of worship and joy, because we hand back to the owner a part of what he has trusted to us. “God loveth a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7), and the willingness itself is his gift, as Paul shows in the churches of Macedonia, whose rich generosity came from the grace of God given to them (2 Corinthians 8:1–5).

“For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers.” Those who give God back his own are themselves his guests. The gêr, stranger, is a resident alien, one living in a land that is not his place of origin. He had rights and protection under Israel’s law and held no inherited land or place in the tribes, though he might live there for a long time. The tôwshâb, sojourner, is a resident who dwells for a time in a place that belongs to another. Together they describe Israel’s standing before God even in its own land. God had told them so: “the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me” (Leviticus 25:23).

“As were all our fathers” reaches back through Israel’s memory. Abraham called himself “a stranger and a sojourner” in the land promised to him (Genesis 23:4), and the nation later lived long in Egypt and wandered in the wilderness. David uses the same words in a psalm: “for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were” (Psalm 39:12). The New Testament takes up the picture. Abraham lived in tents in the land of promise, “For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Hebrews 11:9–10), the patriarchs “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13), and Peter writes to believers “as strangers and pilgrims” (1 Peter 2:11).

“Our days on the earth are as a shadow.” The word tsêl means shadow or shade, and elsewhere it often pictures shelter and protection. Here David uses it for brevity: a shadow passes as the light moves, and so do our days. “And there is none abiding.” Everything on earth passes, and some translations read “there is no hope”, for a life has no lasting hope of its own. In the same breath David is speaking to the God who abides for ever.

“I know also, my God, that thou triest the heart.” The verb bâchan means to examine, test or prove, the word used for proving metals to find out whether they are pure. “The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the LORD trieth the hearts” (Proverbs 17:3). The heart, lêbâb, is the inner person, the seat of thought, feeling, will and moral character. When God tries it, he looks to the motive behind the gift. “For man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7), and through Jeremiah he says, “I the LORD search the heart” (Jeremiah 17:10).

God “hast pleasure in uprightness”. The word yôsher comes from a root meaning straight, and it means integrity and honesty, a heart that is straight through and through. God delights in that inward truth: “thou desirest truth in the inward parts” (Psalm 51:6), and “a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalm 51:16–17). David uses the same word twice, once for what God loves and once for his own heart.

David’s praise turns to prayer. He calls on the “LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, our fathers”, the God who made his covenant with the patriarchs and has kept faith with their children ever since, and his plea rests on that faithfulness.

“Keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of thy people.” “This” is the willing, glad devotion he has just seen. The word for imagination, yêtser, comes from a root meaning to form or fashion, and it is the inner shaping of the mind and will, a person’s bent or inclination. “Thoughts” is machăshâbâh, a plan, intention or purpose, and “heart” is lêbâb again. Together the phrase takes in the whole inner life: its leanings, its purposes and the choices of the will. The same phrase stands at the opening of the flood story, where God saw “that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). David prays for the opposite, that the good inclination God has given his people would stay in them for ever.

“And prepare their heart unto thee.” The verb is kûwn once more, the word David used for preparing the materials. Here it means to set the heart firm, establish it and direct it toward God. Human hearts wander, for “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9), and steady devotion is God’s work in us: “The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the LORD” (Proverbs 16:1). The prophets later promise this very work, God writing his law in his people’s hearts (Jeremiah 31:33) and giving them a new heart and his own Spirit (Ezekiel 36:26–27).

David, with all his authority, prays to God for his people’s faithfulness. That honours God as the one who shapes and keeps the heart, and it leaves the people’s part in place, for they had given willingly and were called to go on walking in the heart God prepared. God works in us “both to will and to do of his good pleasure”, and we work it out (Philippians 2:12–13).

David’s last request is for his son. “And give unto Solomon my son a perfect heart.” The verb nâthan, to give, is one of the broadest in Hebrew, and here it asks God for a gift that only he can bestow. “My son”, bên, carries a father’s love. Of all the things David could ask for Solomon, power, wealth or victory, he asks for a heart.

The word for perfect, shâlêm, means whole or complete, and of a person’s heart it means wholehearted and sincere, fully committed to God. It is related to shalom, peace or wholeness. The heart David asks for is undivided in its loyalty, the opposite of the heart Hosea condemns: “Their heart is divided” (Hosea 10:2). It is the heart the law asks of every Israelite: “thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). Everything flows from it: “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23). David himself had prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Psalm 51:10), and he knew that the LORD looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).

A whole heart shows itself in obedience: “to keep thy commandments, thy testimonies, and thy statutes.” To keep, shâmar, is to guard, watch over and observe with care. The commandments, mitsvâh, are God’s commands and precepts. The testimonies, ʻêdûwth, are his solemn declarations, which bear witness to his covenant with Israel. The statutes, chôq, are what God has prescribed: decrees, ordinances and appointed portions. Together they name the whole of God’s revealed will, the law Psalm 119 delights in from its first verses (Psalm 119:1–8). “And to do all these things” uses ʻâsâh, to do or make, and asks for obedience in every part. Love and obedience go together into the New Testament: “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

The prayer then turns to the work: “and to build the palace, for the which I have made provision.” David had made the provision, kûwn again, and Solomon would do the building, bânâh. David had already charged him, “the LORD hath chosen thee to build an house for the sanctuary: be strong, and do it” (1 Chronicles 28:10), and Solomon began the work in due course (1 Kings 6:1). The gold was ready, and everything still hung on the heart of the man who would lead. God had promised David a son who would build a house for his name, with a throne established for ever (2 Samuel 7:12–16), and Israel’s law tied the nation’s blessing to obedience (Deuteronomy 28:1–14), as Joshua was told when he took up his charge (Joshua 1:7–9). The books of Kings go on to judge each king by whether he walked in God’s ways. David asked for his son what Jesus later put first: “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33).

The prayer was needed. When Solomon was old, he came to have the divided heart his father had prayed against (1 Kings 11:4), and it led the people astray.

The greatness, power, glory and majesty David gave to God are shown to us in Jesus Christ, “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3), “the image of the invisible God”, by whom all things were created and “by him all things consist” (Colossians 1:15–17). God’s mighty power raised him from the dead, set him far above all principality and power, and made him “the head over all things to the church” (Ephesians 1:19–22), the exaltation “as head above all” that David confessed. The risen Christ says, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18). He is “the head of all principality and power” (Colossians 2:10), and in him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). Heaven sings, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing” (Revelation 5:12), and he bears the name “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS” (Revelation 19:16). Of his kingdom “there shall be no end” (Luke 1:33), and every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord (Philippians 2:10–11). The God who gives strength unto all gives it through him: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13), and “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). David blessed the LORD for ever and ever, and “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8).

“Of thine own have we given thee” finds its deepest meaning in the gift God gave of his own. Christ, who owned all things, “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7), and “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). God gave his only begotten Son (John 3:16), the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and we are sanctified “through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). So we are God’s own twice over, for “ye are bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20).

The temple David provided for pointed beyond itself. Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”, and “he spake of the temple of his body” (John 2:19–21). In him his people grow into “an holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:19–22), “lively stones” offering “spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). The thanks and praise of verse 13 go on there: “let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name” (Hebrews 13:15). Through Christ we have access to the Father (Ephesians 2:18), who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in him (Ephesians 1:3) and from whom “Every good gift and every perfect gift” comes (James 1:17). David blessed the God of Israel his father, and Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name” (Matthew 6:9).

The strangers whose days are a shadow have a Saviour who shared that life. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), and the Son of man had nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20). He is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25–26), and “because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood” (Hebrews 7:24). Our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20), where he has gone to prepare a place for us (John 14:2–3).

The whole heart David asked for Solomon belonged fully to David’s greater Son. Christ came saying, “Lo, I come ... to do thy will, O God” (Hebrews 10:5–7), came down from heaven to do the will of him that sent him (John 6:38), and came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17). He condemned a religion that is fair outside and unclean within (Matthew 23:27–28), and his blood purges our conscience “from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14). By his Spirit God now does what David prayed for, giving new hearts (Ezekiel 36:26–27) and writing his law within (Jeremiah 31:33), so that his people offer themselves willingly as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1).

David’s prayer gives us words for the moments when God has made us able to give. Every gift we bring him, of money, time or strength, comes out of what he first put into our hands, and David’s sentence fits each one: “of thine own have we given thee.” That truth keeps giving humble and glad, because God is the owner and we are his grateful stewards.

The prayer also shows who God is. He is great beyond every king, the owner of heaven and earth, the giver of riches, honour and strength, the one who tries the heart and delights in uprightness. Our days pass like a shadow, and he is blessed for ever and ever, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, who keeps faith with every generation.

And it shows what we may ask of him. David asked God to keep a willing spirit in his people and to give his son a whole heart, and God has promised to do that work in the hearts of his people. A father praying for his children, or a church praying for those who will come after it, has David’s prayer ready to pray.