"His seed also will I make to endure for ever."--_Psalm 89:29_
YOU know the two Tables of the Commandments were kept in the Ark of the
Covenant; and when the Israelites were going about in the wilderness,
they had a beautiful tent to keep it in. But now they had come into
the Land of Promise, and had no more journeys to make, David wished to
build a house, or temple, where the Ark might be kept, and to make it
beautiful for the glory of God.
But the Lord had sent a prophet to tell David that he must not himself
build a house for God, because he had been a man of war, and had
fought, and shed much blood; but that his son Solomon should be a man
of rest, and should build the Temple for the Lord.
David did not repine. He thanked God for giving him the hope that his
son should do this great work; and all the rest of his life he was
busy getting together gold and silver, brass and iron, and beautiful
cedar wood, all for the Temple of his God. It was to be built on Mount
Moriah, on the threshing-floor he had bought of Ornan, just by the city
of Jerusalem, which David had conquered from the Jebusites, and made
the capital of his kingdom.