And yet this was a small thing in your sight, O Lord God; and you have also spoken of your servant’s house for a great while to come. Is this the manner of man, O Lord God? 2 Sam 7:19 (NKJV)
Wyns suggests in “Deuteronomy 30:12-14 in Romans 10:3-8”[1] that the question in Rom 3:27, “By what law?”, echoes 2 Sam 7:19, “Is this the manner of man?”. The Hebrew of the phrase is,
~dah trwt tazw
wezō’t tôrat hā’ādām
The phrase is literally, “and this—law of men”, which is naturally taken to be a question. Wyns notes that although English versions remove a reference to a “law”, the LXX preserves a reference to a “law”.
Whereas I was very little before thee, O Lord, my Lord, yet thou spokest concerning the house of thy servant for a long time to come. And is this the law of man, O Lord, my Lord? 2 Sam 7:19 (LXE)
Alter translates the phrase as “This is a man’s instruction”, but admits that “this is no more than an interpretive guess, for the meaning of the Hebrew is obscure”.[2] The NIV has “Is this your usual way of dealing with man?” and the NRSV renders the phrase as “May this be the instruction for the people”. The RSV might appear to omit the phrase completely because it has “and hast shown me future generations”. However, here the RSV is regarding the Hebrew as corrupt and relying on an emended text suggested by scholars such as S. R. Driver.[3]
The obscurity that Alter mentions is not an obscurity about words—the Hebrew phrase has four common words which are literally “and this—law of men”. Hence, while H. A. Whittaker; observes that the phrase is a “trial to interpreters”, he translates the phrase as “the law of the man” which is possible.[4] The obscurity for scholars, on the other hand, is about what is being said. The question form is often inferred in Hebrew clauses, and the phrase “and this—law of men” would naturally suggest a question such as, “And is this a law of men?”; hence, the NIV has a question form. However, other versions do not interpret the phrase as a question, and so the NRSV makes the phrase into an expression of hope on the part of David, and the NASB makes the phrase a declaration: “And this is the custom of man”.
C. Kaiser paraphrases 2 Sam 7:19 as a declaration: “This is the charter by which humanity will be directed”. [5] Taking Kaiser’s line, the Samuel passage highlights the Davidic Covenant, with its messianic implications, as the foundation for all subsequent working of God in history. 2 Samuel 7 becomes, with the Abrahamic Covenant (Genesis 12, 15 and 17), the universal “charter” by which Yahweh will confirm the universal promise of blessing to all nations.
Driver states that the best explanation of 2 Sam 7:19 that had been so far offered in his day interpreted David as saying that God had evinced a regard for him in accordance with a law prescribed by God himself that regulated the dealings of men with one another.[6] Driver rejects this explanation because ideas of “manner” and “custom” are not regular senses for the Hebrew word torah; he thinks the Hebrew text in this phrase is corrupt.
With any suspected corruption in the Hebrew text in Samuel-Kings, scholars examine the parallel text (if there is one) in Chronicles. The Chronicler’s parallel line reads in the NIV as, “You have looked on me as though I were the most exalted of men”; the NRSV has “You regard me as someone of high rank”. However, these proposals betray significant interpretative choices by the translators. The Hebrew could well mean, “You have regarded me as a turtledove of men of high degree” (cf. Ps 74:19). Such a figure could cause a literally minded translator to pursue other translation choices. Whittaker offers, “Thou hast caused me to see according to the law of the man of the ascent”,[7] although ‘law’ is not in the existing Hebrew text. Certainly ‘ascent’ is possible rather than ‘high degree’.
Driver considers the parallel text in 1 Chron 17:17 to be “more obscure”[8] than 2 Sam 7:19 and similarly corrupt. He “corrects” the Hebrew of 1 Chron 17:17 to give the English sense, “and hast let me see the generations of men”. The “correction” of Hebrew might be proposed on various grounds including suggestions that substitute similar shaped consonants which result in the text having a different word. This is what Driver is essentially doing in this text and by changing one consonant he can eliminate a phrase that appears to be “as a turtledove” to “generations”. With another change to the person of the same verb from “You regard me” to “You have let me see”, Driver has engineered “and hast let me see the generations of men”. The RSV follows Driver’s approach and has “and hast shown me future generations” in 1 Chron 17:17; it then substitutes this phrase from 1 Chronicles into 2 Samuel (regardless of 2 Samuel’s actual Hebrew).
In conclusion, we can argue that Paul’s quotation of 2 Sam 7:19 in Rom 3:27—“By what law?” interprets the Hebrew as a question, retains the semantic ingredients of “law” and “men” and allows readers today to arbitrate among the various competing modern translations.
[1] P. Wyns, “Deuteronomy 30:12-14 in Romans 10:3-8” CeJBI 3 (2008).
[2] R. Alter, The David Story (New York: Norton, 1999), 234.
[3] S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890), 213.
[4] H. A. Whittaker, Samuel, Saul & David (Chino: McDonald Publishing Services, 1984), 361.
[5] W. C. Kaiser, “The Blessing of David, The Charter for Humanity” in The Law and the Prophets (ed., J. H. Skilton; Nutley: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1974), 311.
[6] Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel, 213.
[7] Samuel, Saul & David, 361.
[8] Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel, 213.
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