DAVID: A HEART LIKE GOD
INTRODUCTION
According to the biblical tradition, God is the King of the Universe; no human king can assume kingship except as the deputy of the divine King; see the commentary on 8:7. God has been enthroned as King from “before the Flood” (Ps. 29:10), that is, from eternity. This view is expressed early — even in the premonarchic period — in Exod. 15:18, “The Lord will reign forever and ever.”
THE HEART OF HUMANITY
That the beating heart indicates life seems implied in 1 Samuel 25:37, 38 despite the delay in Nabal’s death; perhaps “heart” means “midriff” (cf. 2 Sm 18:14; 2 Kgs 9:24). Physical food and wine affect the heart (Jgs 19:5; Ps 104:15; Acts 14:17), and the heart can “faint,” and “tremble.” The heart’s position yields an obvious metaphor for “the center” (Dt 4:11; Mt 12:40).
Religious Heart. The heart is especially important in biblical religion. The mystery of the hidden self is fully known to God and to Christ (Jer 17:10; Lk 9:47; Rom 8:27; and throughout), and the heart is the seat of our knowledge of God (2 Cor 4:6). The state of heart governs the vision of God (Mt 5:8); from the heart one speaks to God (Ps 27:8); the heart is the locus of divine indwelling (2 Cor 1:22; Gal 4:6; Eph 3:17).
On the other hand, moral evil in the heart is seen in biblical perspective as sin against God. Senseless hearts are darkened, often secretly idolatrous, far from God, “not right” before God (Dt 29:18, 19; Mt 15:8; Acts 8:21; Rom 1:21). Yet the Lord will not despise a broken, contrite heart (Ps 51:17); if when one’s heart is turned toward God, he promises to make it sensitive to divine things, renewed and purified (Dt 4:29; 2 Kgs 23:25; Ps 51:10; Jl 2:13; Ez 36:25–27). God’s law shall then be written on the heart, as the inward guide and incentive (Jer 31:33; Heb 8:10; cf. 2 Cor 3:2, 3).
In Christian terms, such transformation involves believing the gospel from the “honest and good heart” that provides fruitful soil for the Word of God (Lk 8:15; Rom 10:9). The true heart draws near to God, loves him with all its intellect, feeling, and will (Lk 10:27; Heb 10:22). Then God becomes to the heart strength, reward, renewal, grace, peace, and joy (Ps 73:26; Is 57:15; Acts 2:46; Phil 4:7; Heb 13:9). So the ancient ideal becomes possible again, that of being “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Sm 13:14; Acts 13:22).
The high value which Scripture places upon such heart-religion does not discourage corporate worship and prayer, nor the uniting of individual hearts in spiritual fellowship (Jer 32:39; Ez 11:19; Acts 4:32). But it is directed against the external legalism, which judges according to visible outward acts rather than inward dispositions (Mt 5:21–48); against the heartless “hardness” of prevailing regulations concerning the sabbath, marriage, religious obligations (Mk 3:5; Mt 19:8; 23:4); against hypocrisy and self-display that belie the true state of heart (Is 29:13; Jer 3:10; Mt 6:1–18).
One fundamental assumption of Scripture is that the human heart is constantly open to influences from above and from below. God would “lay hold of [human] hearts” (Ez 14:5), “incline hearts” to his truth and ways (Ps 119:36), “put into … hearts to carry out his purposes,” both for judgment and for salvation (Rv 17:17). The alternative to divine “possession” is the demonic influence that can drag the heart down to utmost evil (Jn 13:2; Acts 5:3). The same heart that can be “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer 17:9) can also become the shrine of divine love and the Spirit (Rom 5:5).
In that openness to infinite good or evil, the scriptural dimensions of the human heart are revealed.
THE HEART OF GOD
VII. Heart of God
“Heart” is applied to God in much the same way as to humans. God seeks people “after his own heart” (1 S. 13:14, disobedient Saul’s loss of the kingdom), for what is in His heart is His will. Thus the word comes to Eli in 1 S. 2:35, “I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind” (Heb. kaʾašer bileḇāḇî ûḇenap̱šî, lit “according to my will and desire”). The kindness of His heart (Lam. 3:33) and the profound way in which human evil has “grieved him to his heart” are readily apparent. In Hos. 11:8 God, in contemplating judgment, speaks of the “overthrow” (Heb. hāp̱aḵ) of His mind (RSV “my heart recoils within me”), the reversal of His own decision. As Wolff (p. 58) puts it, “God’s heart, i.e., his free resolve of love, turns against his decision of anger. So Hosea promised that decision in the heart of God which has been sealed for all nations in Jesus Christ.”