The Davidic Covenant—God’s individual covenant with King David and his heirs—came into being in response to Israel’s need for protection against enemies. Although God had promised his protection under the collective Sinai Covenant, it required his entire people’s obedience to his commandments that are the terms of the covenant. That obedience had been achieved during Israel’s wilderness wandering under the leadership of Moses and Joshua. It quickly faded, however, after Israel settled the Promised Land.
Instead of remembering their God, “every man did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6). Consequently, God withdrew his protection and Israel’s enemies began making inroads against them. In spite of this, God had mercy on them. He raised up judges from time to time who rallied local tribes to banish them. By the time of the prophet Samuel, however, the Philistines threatened Israel’s very existence. Israel’s elders realized the people needed a king who could unite all the tribes against their enemies.
After Saul’s short-lived tenure as king, God chose David, “a man after his own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). David succeeded in overthrowing Israel’s enemies and uniting the tribes (2 Samuel 5:1–25). When David proved loyal to him, God made an individual covenant with him in the pattern of ancient Near Eastern emperor–vassal covenants: “I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn to David my servant: Your offspring will I establish forever and build up your throne to all generations.” (Psalms 89:3–4)
Called a “Covenant of Grant,” it promised Israel’s protection: “You spoke in vision to your holy one and said, I have laid help upon one who is mighty; I have exalted one chosen out of the people: I have found David, my servant. With my holy oil have I anointed him, with whom my hand shall be established. My arm also shall strengthen him. The enemy shall not exact upon him nor the son of wickedness afflict him. But I will beat down his foes before his face and plague them that hate him.” (Psalms 89:19–37)
As in emperor–vassal covenants, after a vassal proves loyal to his emperor under all conditions, the emperor makes an unconditional covenant with him, granting him and his descendants a permanent right to the throne: “My covenant I will not break, nor alter the thing that has gone from my lips. I have sworn by my holiness that I will not lie to David. His offspring shall endure forever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established forever as the moon, as a faithful witness in heaven.” (Psalms 89:34–37)
God’s covenant with David proved to be a great benefit to his people Israel as now God would protect them for David’s sake: “I will appoint a place for my people Israel and plant them that they may dwell in a place of their own and move no more. Nor will the children of wickedness afflict them anymore as before.” (2 Samuel 7:10) Instead of the entire people of Israel being required to keep God’s commandments that are the terms of the Sinai Covenant, all that was now required of them was loyalty to their king.
As in ancient Near Eastern emperor–vassal covenants, when a vassal king keeps the law of the emperor and the people of the vassal keep the law of the vassal, the emperor is bound by the terms of his covenant to protect both the vassal king and his people. Under that arrangement, the vassal king answers to the emperor for the loyalties of his people to the emperor. In other words, the vassal stands in for his own people before the emperor, becoming their surrogate or proxy in matters of loyalty to the emperor.
For the people of Israel, maintaining loyalty to their king constituted a lesser law than loyalty to their God. Hence, the prophet Samuel protested that “Jehovah your God is your King” (1 Samuel 12:12). If they had remained loyal to him as a people, God would have protected them, obviating their need for a king. For the king, on the other hand, maintaining loyalty to Israel’s God—his emperor—constituted a higher law than that of the Sinai Covenant. He was now answerable to God for the loyalty of his people.
Thus, while on the one hand the king was a great benefit to his people by acting as their proxy savior in securing their protection, on the other he assumed the burden of suffering the effects of their disloyalties to their God. Isaiah encapsulates God’s formula for his people’s protection when he says, “Because of his knowledge [of the terms of the Davidic Covenant], and by bearing their iniquities [his people’s disloyalties to God], shall my servant, the righteous one [his vassal], vindicate many.” (Isaiah 53:11)
We observe this formula for God’s protection under the terms of the Davidic Covenant acted out at Assyria’s siege of Jerusalem in the days of King Hezekiah, a righteous vassal of Israel’s God. When an Assyrian army of 185,000 men surrounds Jerusalem and demands its surrender on pain of death, the people remain loyal to their king and the king remains loyal to God. In other words, they keep his law and he keeps God’s law. On that basis, Hezekiah intercedes with his emperor on behalf of himself and his people:
Isaiah 37:18–20O Jehovah, the kings of Assyria have indeed destroyed all peoples and their lands, committing their gods to the fire. For they were no gods, but mere works of men’s hands, of wood and of stone, and so they could destroy them. But now, O Jehovah our God, deliver us out of his hand, that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone are Jehovah.
When portraying this scenario, Isaiah explicitly links Hezekiah’s suffering of a deathly illness to his people’s deliverance from the Assyrians. Such linking implies that Hezekiah—a righteous king on David’s throne—is required to pay the price of his people’s deliverance by suffering covenant curses that have accrued to them from their disloyalties to God. As his “servant”—his vassal under the terms of the Davidic Covenant—Hezekiah is willing to answer for their “iniquities” in order to secure their protection.
Isaiah 38:1–3In those days Hezekiah became gravely ill. And the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him and said, Thus says Jehovah: Put your house in order. You will die; you will not recover. At this Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall and prayed to Jehovah: I beseech you to remember, O Jehovah, how I have walked before you faithfully and with full purpose of heart and have done what is good in your eyes. And Hezekiah wept disconsolately.
Isaiah 53:11–12He shall see the toil of his soul and be satisfied; because of his knowledge, and by bearing their iniquities, shall my servant, the righteous one, vindicate many. I will assign him an inheritance among the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the mighty, because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with criminals — he bore the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
Isaiah 38:4–6Then the word of Jehovah came to Isaiah: Go and tell Hezekiah, Thus says Jehovah, the God of your father David: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; I will protect this city.
Isaiah 37:35–36I will protect this city and save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David. Then the angel of Jehovah went out and slew a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. And when men arose in the morning, there lay all their dead bodies!
Thus far in this section, we have focused on Israel’s temporal salvation—its deliverance from death in the face of a mortal threat. However, the same principle of proxy salvation under the terms of the Davidic Covenant operates also on a higher spiritual level in order to secure God’s people’s spiritual salvation. As discussed elsewhere in this series, two messianic persons appear in Isaiah’s prophecy: (1) an end-time king or prince named David; and (2) Israel’s God Jehovah, King of Zion and Savior of the world.
Besides taking on a Hezekiah persona, God’s end-time Davidic servant additionally takes on a Moses persona. Serving as his people’s “lawgiver” on the model of Moses, he gathers a new “nation” of God’s elect people out of a worldwide destruction in God’s Day of Judgment. In the second instance, God’s end-time servant appeals to God’s people to believe in their Savior–God, he who secures their spiritual salvation by answering for their iniquities under the terms of the Davidic Covenant on a higher level.
Isaiah 55:3–5Give ear and come unto me; pay heed, that your souls may live! And I will make with you an everlasting covenant: [my] loving fidelity toward David. See, I have appointed him as a witness to the nations, a prince and lawgiver of the peoples. You will summon a nation that you did not know; a nation that did not know you will hasten to you — because of Jehovah your God, the Holy One of Israel, who gloriously endows you.
Isaiah 35:10The ransomed of Jehovah shall return; they shall come singing to Zion, their heads crowned with everlasting joy. They shall have won joy and gladness when sorrow and sighing flee away
Isaiah 66:8Who has heard the like, or who has seen such things? Can the earth labor but a day and a nation be born at once?
Isaiah 53:1, 4–8Who has believed our revelation? On whose account has the arm of Jehovah been revealed?
He bore our sufferings, endured our griefs, though we thought him stricken, smitten of God, and humbled. But he was pierced for our transgressions, crushed because of our iniquities; the price of our peace he incurred, and with his wounds we are healed. We all like sheep had gone astray, each of us headed his own way; Jehovah brought together upon him the iniquity of us all.
He was harassed, yet submissive, and opened not his mouth— like a lamb led to slaughter, like a sheep, dumb before its shearers, he opened not his mouth. By arrest and trial he was taken away. Who can apprise his generation that he was cut off from the land of the living for the crime of my people, to whom the blow was due
In each case, those who are delivered—temporally or spiritually—come under God’s law of mercy so long as they remain loyal to their king. The king, on the other hand, comes under God’s law of justice as he answers for his people’s disloyalties. In that event, we see how a deliverer is born. Under the terms of the Davidic Covenant, when a king measures up by bearing his people’s iniquities, God saves the people “for the sake of” his vassal, their king. The king “knows” God will do his part when he does his.
God’s deliverance in Hezekiah’s day thus typifies a similar deliverance at the end of the world. When an end-time “Assyria” threatens to destroy a righteous remnant of God’s people, a descendant of David acts as their proxy savior by delivering them from destruction. A nation “born in a day”—God’s worldwide Day of Judgment—rallies to its deliverer the same as Israel’s captives in Egypt rallied to Moses. Two messianic saviors, one temporal, the other spiritual, thus appear prominently in Isaiah’s prophecy.
Outside of these covenantal agreements, there exists no salvation, temporal or spiritual. In other words, deliverance and salvation don’t just happen when people try to be good. They occur within the context of covenants God has made. On that same model, other servants of God may serve as proxy saviors of those to whom they minister. In fact, keeping the terms of the Davidic Covenant forms the essence of living God’s higher law. Isaiah predicts many end-time servants of God will help to deliver his people:
Isaiah 65:8–9Thus says Jehovah: As when there is juice in a cluster of grapes and someone says, Don’t destroy it, it is still good, so I will do for the sake of my servants by not destroying everything: I will extract offspring out of Jacob, and out of Judah heirs of my mountains; my chosen ones shall inherit them, my servants shall dwell there.
Isaiah 54:16–17It is I who create the smith who fans the flaming coals, forging weapons to suit his purpose; it is I who create the ravager to destroy. Whatever weapon is devised against you, it shall not succeed; every tongue that rises to accuse you, you shall refute. This is the heritage of the servants of Jehovah, and such is their vindication by me, says Jehovah.