Trevor Laurence
1 Chronicles 22 and 28–29 narrate King David’s commissioning of Solomon to fulfill David’s hope and build a house for the Lord (cf. 1 Chron 17:1).
This is of itself a momentous occasion for the people of God. But significantly, David’s charge to Solomon recapitulates a familiar pattern from Israel’s past, a pattern which will be repeated in Israel’s future, a pattern which connects Solomon’s succession to the broader story of God’s redemptive work in the world.
New Moses, New Joshua
The details of the Chronicler’s account of Solomon’s succession of David correspond quite closely to the contours of Moses’ commissioning of Joshua in Deut 31, which the Lord reiterates to Joshua in Josh 1.1
- As Moses addresses “all Israel” (Deut 31:1) prior to directing his speech to Joshua, so David offers an exhortation “in the sight of all Israel” (1 Chron 28:8)—represented by the gathered Israelite leaders (v. 1)—before turning his attention to Solomon.
- Moses reports that the Lord said to him, “You shall not go over this Jordan” (Deut 31:2), prohibiting him from entering the land toward which he had been leading Israel. David reports that God said to him, “You may not build a house for my name” (1 Chron 28:3), prohibiting him from culminating his land-subduing campaign (1 Chron 22:18) by constructing the temple for God’s holy presence with his people.
- Moses names Joshua as the divinely appointed successor who will lead Israel into Canaan to dispossess the nations (Deut 31:3), and David names Solomon as the divinely appointed successor who will build God’s house in the land (1 Chron 28:6).
- The specific content of David’s charge to Solomon in 1 Chron 28:20 closely mirrors, down to the very vocabulary, Moses’ charge to Joshua: “Then David said to Solomon his son, ‘Be strong and courageous [חֲזַק וֶאֱמַץ, cf. Deut 31:7, 23; Josh 1:6–7, 9; 1 Chron 22:13] and do it. Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed [אַל־תִּירָא וְאַל־תֵּחָת, cf. Deut 31:8; 1 Chron 22:13],2 for the LORD God, even my God, is with you [כִּי יְהוָה…עִמָּךְ, cf. Deut 31:8, 23; Josh 1:5, 9; 1 Chron 22:16]. He will not leave you or forsake you [לֹא יַרְפְּךָ וְלֹא יַעַזְבֶךָּ, cf. Deut 31:8; Josh 1:5], until all the work for the service of the house of the LORD is finished.'”
- Moses commissions Joshua as the leader who will “go with this people into the land that the LORD has sworn to their fathers to give them, and you shall put them in possession of it” (Deut 31:7), and the Lord says Joshua “shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them” (Josh 1:6). Having identified Solomon as the royal heir whose kingdom will be established forever, David calls Israel to faithfulness in order “that you may possess this good land and leave it for an inheritance to your children after you forever” (1 Chron 28:8).
- Moses reminds Israel to obey everything God has commanded (Deut 31:5), and the Lord tells Joshua to meditate upon and do the whole law so that he may prosper and have good success (Josh 1:7–8). Similarly, David assures Israel and Solomon that they will prosper if they observe God’s law (1 Chron 22:12–13; 28:7–9). Holy adherence to God’s word by the head and whole of Israel will yield life in God’s presence across generations in the land the Lord is giving his people.
- Intriguingly, David is further associated with Moses in that he provides Solomon, literally, “a pattern of all which was in the Spirit with him” (1 Chron 28:12)—a pattern for the temple quite like the tabernacle pattern shown to Moses (Exod 25:9, 40) when he entered the cloud of God’s glory-Spirit atop Sinai (Exod 24:15–18)—and Solomon’s Joshua-like obedience to God in the land is to include obedience to the temple plan David put “in writing from the hand of the Lord” (1 Chron 28:19). Moreover, Moses takes up contributions from the people of Israel for the tabernacle: “All the men and women, the people of Israel, whose heart moved [נדב] them to bring anything for the work that the LORD had commanded by Moses to be done brought it as a freewill offering [נְדָבָה] to the LORD” (Exod 35:29). And David does the same for the temple: “Then the leaders of the fathers’ houses made their freewill offerings [נדב]. . . . Then the people rejoiced because they had given willingly [נדב], for with a whole heart they had offered freely [נדב] to the LORD” (1 Chron 29:6, 9).
- Joshua declares to the Reubenites, Gadites, and half-tribe of Manasseh that the Lord is giving them rest (נוח, Josh 1:13; cf. Num 32) east of the Jordan and will give their brothers rest (נוח, Josh 1:15) beyond the Jordan. Through David, God gave Israel rest (נוח) by subduing the land and defeating its inhabitants (1 Chron 22:18), but in 1 Chron 22:9, David identifies Solomon as the promised man of rest (אִישׁ מְנוּחָה) whom the Lord will give rest (נוח) from all his surrounding enemies, whose reign will—like his name (שְׁלֹמֹה)—spell peace (שָׁלוֹם) for Israel. Like Joshua, Solomon will lead Israel into rest in the land. Exceeding Joshua, Solomon the man of rest will, as 1 Chron 28:2 makes explicit, build a house of rest (בֵּית מְנוּחָה) for God.
- The leaders of Israel pledge to Joshua their obedience (Josh 1:16–18), and “the people of Israel obeyed him [וַיִּשְׁמְעוּ אֵלָיו]” (Deut 34:9). Following this pattern, Israel’s leaders pledge their allegiance to Solomon (1 Chron 29:24), and “all Israel obeyed him [וַיִּשְׁמְעוּ אֵלָיו]” (v. 23).
- On the edge of Canaan, the Lord calls Joshua to “arise” (קוּם, Josh 1:2) and go over the Jordan to begin establishing the land of rest for God and Israel, heartened by the promise of God’s presence. On the edge of Solomon’s reign, David in 1 Chron 22:16 calls Solomon to “arise” (קוּם) and begin to establish the house of rest for the Lord, invoking the promised presence of God—a call he repeats to the leaders of Israel (1 Chron 22:19).
- In the Pentateuch, Joshua is commissioned Moses’ successor twice—in Num 27:12–23 and Deut 31. The Chronicler likewise records Solomon’s installation as king twice: the first in 1 Chron 23:1 (cf. 1 Kgs 1:28–40), with 1 Chron 29:22 explicitly stating that Israel “made Solomon the son of David king the second time.”3
- Deuteronomy 34:9 characterizes Joshua as “full of the spirit of wisdom,” divinely equipped to lead Israel into the land. Solomon is anointed king (1 Chron 29:22)—a symbolic endowment with the Spirit—and blessed with wisdom (2 Chron 1:7–13), divinely equipped to reign in the land and carry out his temple-building task.
- Through Joshua’s successful leadership across the Jordan, “the LORD exalted [גדל] Joshua in the sight of all Israel [בְּעֵינֵי כָּל־יִשְׂרָאֵל]” (Josh 4:14; cf. 3:7), and 1 Chron 29:25 likewise recounts that through Solomon’s prosperous kingship, “the LORD highly exalted [גדל] Solomon in the sight of all Israel [לְעֵינֵי כָּל־יִשְׂרָאֵל].”
The conscious and multifaceted presentation of the transition from David to Solomon in the pattern of Moses and Joshua signals clearly that David is a new Moses passing his mantle of leadership to Solomon, the new Joshua. Like Moses, David provides the divine specifications for God’s dwelling place and leads Israel through battle toward the actualization of God’s promised blessing in the land. Like Joshua, Solomon completes the work of his predecessor in the power of the Spirit so that God’s people may enjoy rest in the presence of God in the land the Lord has given.
More broadly, the parallels between the paired leadership of Moses and Joshua and the paired kingship of David and Solomon suggests that David and Solomon together bring to fulfillment the work of God that was inaugurated in the ministry of Moses and Joshua. Following God’s miraculous deliverance through the Red Sea, Moses sings in Exod 15:17:
You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain,
the place, O LORD, which you have made for your abode,
the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established.
The unified work of redeeming Israel from slavery for life in the holy presence of God that begins with Moses’ exodus from Egypt continues with Joshua’s entrance into the land, progresses further with David’s subduing of the peoples and preparation for the temple, and culminates finally with Solomon’s construction of the Lord’s house at Mount Zion—the place God has made for his abode, the sanctuary where he plants his people in his presence on his mountain.
New David, New Solomon
The pattern established with Moses’ commissioning of Joshua and repeated with David’s commissioning of Solomon recurs again with Jesus’ commissioning of his church.
Jesus the Son of David, by the Mosaic exodus of his death and resurrection, subdues the enemies of God’s people, inaugurates his kingdom, and secures his followers’ rest with God. Like his father David—who said, “With great pains I have provided for the house of the LORD” (1 Chron 22:14)—Jesus prepares for the construction of God’s temple in the world, accomplishing in the pain of his passion everything necessary to ensure that the house for God’s glory will be built.
Jesus, too, will depart from the earth prior to the Pentecostal creation of God’s ecclesial temple toward which he labored, but before he goes, he readies the community who will continue his ministry. In the upper room, the Lord echoes the comforts of old with the promise, “I will not leave you as orphans” (John 14:18), and the exhortation, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27)—for he will give the Holy Spirit to dwell with and in them.4
After his resurrection, the Davidic Messiah commissions his Solomonic church—sending her, like Joshua, into the land the Lord has given—to build up the temple, and he assures her that his divine presence will be with her “to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20) when “all the work for the service of the house of the LORD is finished” (1 Chron 28:20). And as David prescribed how Solomon was to construct the temple, specifying measurements and materials, so Jesus prescribes how his church is to build God’s house, specifying the means of word and sacrament (Matt 28:19–20).
Like Solomon the man of rest, the commissioned church is a community of rest who receives the blessing won through her victorious Davidic predecessor and welcomes the nations to worship the one true Lord and enter his rest as well. As David’s royal son was to “observe the statutes and the rules that the LORD commanded” (1 Chron 22:13) and to lead the people to “observe…all the commandments of the LORD” (1 Chron 28:8), Jesus’ royal family is to teach all the nations “to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt 28:20).
Even the sequence of post-resurrection events follows the Solomonic pattern. Solomon is commissioned by David (1 Chron 28:9–21) and subsequently anointed as king (1 Chron 29:22), at which point he receives the allegiance of Israel (1 Chron 29:23–24) and begins work on the temple (2 Chron 2). Likewise, the church is commissioned by a greater David (Matt 28:18–20) and royally anointed with the Spirit (Acts 2:1–4),5 at which point “Jews…from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5) submit in repentance to the apostolic word and the church begins the work of extending God’s temple throughout the earth (cf. Acts 1:8).
And just as Solomon needed and was granted wisdom from God to faithfully execute his kingly calling and build the house of God (2 Chron 1:7–13), so the church needs and has been granted the “Spirit of wisdom” (Eph 1:17; cf. Deut 34:9) to faithfully live as God’s royal family and build the house of God in the world—inviting the nations to become living stones in God’s spiritual house (1 Pet 2:5) and ministering to the body so that she “grows into a holy temple in the Lord…built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Eph 2:21–22).
Trevor Laurence is the Executive Director of the Cateclesia Institute and the author of Cursing with God: The Imprecatory Psalms and the Ethics of Christian Prayer (Baylor University Press, 2022).
Image: Jan Victors, The Dying David Admonishes Solomon
- See H. G. M. Williamson, “The Accession of Solomon in the Books of Chronicles,” Vetus Testamentum 26, no. 3 (July 1976): 351–61; Raymond B. Dillard, 2 Chronicles, WBC 15 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018), 3–4; Mark J. Boda, 1–2 Chronicles, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2010), 182–4.[↩]
- Josh 1:9 conceptually parallels this phrase, but utilizes ערץ in place of ירא.[↩]
- If 1 Kgs 1 indeed corresponds to Solomon’s first anointing as king, there is an additional resonance between these first installations, as both occur as responses to potential crises of leadership in Israel. In Num 27, Moses commissions Joshua so that Israel would not be as sheep without a shepherd (vv. 16–17) in response to the Lord’s revelation that Moses would die in the wilderness. In 1 Kgs 1, David has Solomon anointed king in response to Adonijah’s attempt to make himself king over Israel.[↩]
- Cf. Andreas Köstenberger, “John,” in CNTUOT, ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 490–1. John 14:27 includes the phrase μηδὲ δειλιάτω, which closely parallels Moses’ μηδὲ δειλία in LXX Deut 31:6, 8. Further, as Moses’ and David’s parting commissions exhort obedience to God’s commandments, Jesus’ words to his disciples in John 14 also contain a heavy emphasis on keeping his commandments. Interestingly, Luke 24:37 describes the disciples’ startled and frightened reaction to Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance with the terms πτοέω and ἒμφοβος, corresponding to the terms in David’s exhortation in LXX 1 Chron 28:20, “Do not be afraid [φοβέω] and do not be dismayed [πτοέω],” and with Moses’ in LXX Deut 31:6.[↩]
- In fact, consistent with the pattern established with Joshua and Solomon, Christ’s disciples are commissioned and anointed with the Spirit twice in the Gospels: first prior to Jesus’ ascension in John 20:21–22 and again with the Great Commission and Pentecostal gift of the Spirit in Matt 28:18–20 and Acts 2:1–4.[↩]