Nathan the Prophet #57

Nathan was a prophet who served King David and, at the end of David’s life, helped secure the throne for Solomon. He appears only in a few crucial passages, but each is a turning point: the promise that David’s house would endure, the rebuke that exposed David’s sin with Bathsheba, and the intervention that brought Solomon to the throne. Nathan is a model of a prophet who spoke to a king with both honesty and courage.

Biblical Significance

When David settled in his palace, he told Nathan he wanted to build a house for the ark of God. Nathan first answered that he should do all that was in his heart (2 Samuel 7:1-3). That night the word of the Lord came to Nathan and corrected him. God said that he had not asked for a house of cedar, that he would make David’s name great, and that he would establish David’s offspring after him and build a house for David, rather than the other way around. One of David’s descendants would build a house for God’s name, and God would establish his kingdom forever (2 Samuel 7:4-17). This passage is the basis of the Davidic covenant, and it stands behind later hopes for a Messiah from David’s line.

Nathan’s second major appearance came after David had taken Bathsheba and arranged for the death of her husband Uriah. God sent Nathan to David with a parable about a rich man who took a poor man’s only ewe lamb to feed a guest. David burned with anger, saying the man deserved to die, and Nathan answered, “Thou art the man” (2 Samuel 12:1-7). He announced that the sword would not leave David’s house and that the child born to Bathsheba would die. When David said, “I have sinned against the Lord,” Nathan told him that the Lord had put away his sin, and that he would not die (2 Samuel 12:13-14). Nathan also conveyed God’s message naming Solomon Jedidiah, meaning “beloved of the Lord” (2 Samuel 12:25).

Near the end of David’s life, when Adonijah proclaimed himself king, Nathan worked with Bathsheba to remind David of his oath that Solomon would reign (1 Kings 1:11-14). At David’s order, Nathan and the priest Zadok anointed Solomon at Gihon (1 Kings 1:32-40).

Legacy

Nathan is one of the few prophets in the Old Testament who addresses a king in his own court, and his parable to David is often cited as an example of how to confront wrongdoing in a way that opens the listener’s conscience. The Chronicler records that the acts of David were written in the records of Samuel the seer, Nathan the prophet, and Gad the seer (1 Chronicles 29:29), and that Nathan had a role in organizing temple worship with instruments (2 Chronicles 29:25). His life shows that authority answers to God’s word, and that a prophet may need to correct even the ruler he serves.