“Woe to him who builds his house without righteousness and his upper rooms without justice, who uses his neighbor’s services without pay and does not give him his wages, who says, “I will build myself a roomy house with spacious upper rooms, and cut out its windows, paneling it with cedar and painting it bright red.’ Do you become a king because you are competing in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him” (Jer 22:13-15).
In this chapter, Jeremiah condemns the Davidic kings by making implicit yet profoundly significant comparisons to King David. Whereas David “DID JUSTICE AND RIGHTEOUSNESS for all his people” (2 Sam 8:15), the Davidic kings in Jeremiah’s day disregarded justice and righteousness (Jer 22:13), exploiting the poor and needy (Jer 22:3, 15, 17). Whereas David felt conscience-stricken for living in a house of cedar while the ark of God dwelled in a tent (2 Sam 7:2), the kings of Jeremiah’s time were preoccupied with their cedar mansions, neglecting God’s house and casting aside God’s promises to David (Jer 22:14).
In David’s terrible sufferings, recorded in Samuel and in the psalms, as well as in his glory to follow, they correctly saw an extraordinarily detailed portrait of Yeshua our Messiah.
There is little doubt, therefore, that Jeremiah measures the kings of his day by the standard of David. Yet based on the prophecy in Jeremiah 23:5-6, it is clear that Jeremiah also sees in the story of King David a prefiguration of the ideal King-Messiah who will sit on David’s throne forever: “‘Behold, the days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; and He will reign as king and act wisely and DO JUSTICE IN THE LAND. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely; and this is His name by which He will be called, “The LORD our righteousness.”’”
From Jeremiah’s eschatological reading of David’s life, we learn at least one profoundly important truth. When the New Testament authors found in David’s life—especially in his psalms—Messianic prefigurations and prophecies, they were not forcing the Hebrew Bible into a foreign mold. Rather, they were reading David through the eyes of the prophets. In David’s terrible sufferings, recorded in Samuel and in the psalms, as well as in his glory to follow, they correctly saw an extraordinarily detailed portrait of Yeshua our Messiah.
“Now He said to them, ‘These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and He said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem'” (Luke 24:44-47).
