(14) If he commit iniquity.--The promise has plainly in view a human successor or successors of David upon his throne; and yet it also promises the establishment of David's kingdom FOREVER by an emphatic threefold repetition (2Samuel 7:13; 2Samuel 7:16), which can only be fulfilled, and has always been understood as to be fulfilled, in the Messiah. There is a similar promise of a prophet, human and yet more than human, in Deuteronomy 18:15-22, and the explanation in both cases is the same. The Divine word looks forward to a long succession of human prophets or heads of the theocracy who should for the time being, and as far as might be, fill the place of the true Prophet and King, all culminating at last in Him who should fully make known the Father's will and reign over His people, of "whose kingdom there shall be no end." (Luke 1:32-33).

Verse 14. - I will be his Father, and he shall be my son. Between father and son there is not only love, but oneness. Whatsoever the father hath, that belongs also to the son by natural right. But this sonship is magnified in the Psalms beyond the measure of Solomon or any natural limits. The Son there is "the Firstborn," which Solomon was not, "higher than the kings of the earth" (Psalm 89:27); and he must have "the nations for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession" (Psalm 2:8). Psalms like the second and seventy-second belong, not to Solomon personally, but to him as the type of the prince of Peace; and they help to show us what is the true meaning and fulfilment of the words here. The rod of men; that is, such punishment as men fitly receive for their faults. David's natural posterity was to be exempt neither from human depravity, nor from punishment, nor from the changes and chances of mortal life. With them, as with men generally, there would be a tangled skein, of virtue and sin, of folly and wisdom, of terrible fall and penitent recovery. But there was to be no blotting out of David's lineage. Great earthly houses, in the long course of events, one after another become extinct, and even the tabernacle of David was to fall (Amos 9:11), but not forever. God would "raise up its ruins' in Christ, and "build it as in the days of old." So in Isaiah 9:1 there is the same thought of the complete down-hewing of David's earthly lineage, yet only to rise again to nobler life and vigour, in the Branch, or Sucker, that was to spring from the fallen trunk.

7:4-17 Blessings are promised to the family and posterity of David. These promises relate to Solomon, David's immediate successor, and the royal line of Judah. But they also relate to Christ, who is often called David and the Son of David. To him God gave all power in heaven and earth, with authority to execute judgment. He was to build the gospel temple, a house for God's name; the spiritual temple of true believers, to be a habitation of God through the Spirit. The establishing of his house, his throne, and his kingdom for ever, can be applied to no other than to Christ and his kingdom: David's house and kingdom long since came to an end. The committing iniquity cannot be applied to the Messiah himself, but to his spiritual seed; true believers have infirmities, for which they must expect to be corrected, though they are not cast off.I will be his father, and he shall be my son,.... That is, I will be as kind unto him, and careful of him, as a father of a son; or he shall be, and appear to be my son, by adopting grace, as no doubt Solomon was, notwithstanding all his failings. This is applied to Christ, the antitypical Solomon, who was, in an higher sense, the Son of God, even by natural and eternal generation; see Hebrews 1:5,

if he commit iniquity; which cannot be supposed of Christ; for though he was made sin by imputation, he neither knew nor did any, but may be supposed of his spiritual offspring, whom he represented as an head and surety, as of Solomon, who committed many sins and transgressions:

I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men; either with men themselves, as Hadad the Edomite, Rezon the son of Eliadah, and Jeroboam the son of Nebat, by all whom he was afflicted and distressed, after he felt into idolatry, 1 Kings 11:14; or with such rods and stripes as men correct their children with, not to destroy them, but to chastise them for their good; and so the phrases denote humane, kind, gentle, moderate corrections given in love, and which answer some good purposes.