1 Chronicles 17:3-6 meaning
1 Chronicles 17:3-6 brings God's correction the same night: It came about the same night that the word of God came to Nathan, saying, "Go and tell David My servant, 'Thus says the LORD, "You shall not build a house for Me to dwell in"' (vv 3-4). God calls David "My servant," a title of honor He gave Abraham, Moses, and Israel (Genesis 26:24, Numbers 12:7, Isaiah 44:21), and the message is a refusal spoken in love. In 2 Samuel 7:5 the refusal takes the form of a question, "Are you the one who should build Me a house to dwell in?"; Chronicles states it flatly. David's own later account fills in the reason: "You shall not build a house for My name because you are a man of war and have shed blood" (1 Chronicles 28:3). The refusal belonged to the man and the moment, since God had already chosen a son for the task (1 Chronicles 22:8-10).
God explains His history of dwelling: for I have not dwelt in a house since the day that I brought up Israel to this day, but I have gone from tent to tent and from one dwelling place to another (v 5). 2 Samuel 7:6 says God had been "moving about in a tent, even in a tabernacle"; the Chronicler's from tent to tent likely has the ark's actual itinerary in view—Shiloh, Kiriath-jearim, the house of Obed-edom, and now David's tent on Zion. From the exodus onward God chose to travel with His people under cloth. A tent could move when Israel moved; it said that God went where they went. Centuries later, John would describe the coming of Jesus with the same picture: "the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us," where dwelt is literally "pitched His tent" among us (John 1:14). God's choice of a tent over a house was a way of being present with a people on the move.
God then adds that He had asked no one for a house: "In all places where I have walked with all Israel, have I spoken a word with any of the judges of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd My people, saying, 'Why have you not built for Me a house of cedar?'" (v 6). 2 Samuel 7:7 reads "tribes of Israel" where Chronicles reads judges; the two Hebrew words differ by a single letter, and the Chronicler's phrase, "whom I commanded to shepherd My people" (v 6), fits leaders, since judges, and later kings, were charged to shepherd Israel (1 Chronicles 11:2; Psalm 78:71-72). The point of the question is that God had walked with all Israel through the whole period of the judges without once complaining about His accommodations. A house of cedar was David's idea, drawn from David's own house. God receives the generosity behind it and declines the project, because He has a larger gift to give than the one He is being offered.