Yahweh said to Samuel, “How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite; for I have provided a king for myself among his sons.”
Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me.” Yahweh said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, I have come to sacrifice to Yahweh.
Call Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do. You shall anoint to me him whom I name to you.”
Samuel did that which Yahweh spoke, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, “Do you come peaceably?”
He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to Yahweh. Sanctify yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice.” He sanctified Jesse and his sons, and called them to the sacrifice. When they had come, he looked at Eliab, and said, “Surely Yahweh’s anointed is before him.”
But Yahweh said to Samuel, “Don’t look on his face, or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for I don’t see as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart.” Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Yahweh has not chosen this one, either.” Then Jesse made Shammah to pass by. He said, “Yahweh has not chosen this one, either.” Jesse made seven of his sons to pass before Samuel. Samuel said to Jesse, “Yahweh has not chosen these.” Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your children here?” He said, “There remains yet the youngest. Behold, he is keeping the sheep.” Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and get him, for we will not sit down until he comes here.”
He sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, with a handsome face and good appearance. Yahweh said, “Arise! Anoint him, for this is he.”
Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the middle of his brothers. Then Yahweh’s Spirit came mightily on David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 6, 11, 13 Signifying, that we ought not to show ourselves more…
Signifying, that we ought not to show ourselves more pitiful than God, nor to lament them whom he casteth out.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–13 1Sa 16:1 And the LORD said unto Samuel, How…
1Sa 16:1 And the LORD said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons.
Ver. 1. How long wilt thou mourn for Saul?] Mourn he might, but it was too long that he mourned. Est modus in rebus: It is not fit to wash stables with sweet water. Ad ignem charitatis incalescente pectore liquefactus intus pietatis adeps foras emanabat per oculos, saith Bernard, {a} speaking of Samuel’s mourning.
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Fill thine horn with oil.] See 1Sa 10:1. {See Trapp on "1Sa 10:1"}
I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite.] First, Samuel was told that God had found him out a man after his own heart; {1Sa 13:14} now, that this man shall be one of the sons of Jesse the Bethlehemite; and lastly, that it should be David, after a refusal of his other brethren. God oft revealeth not his will to men, but at sundry times, and by various degrees. So the Messiah was made known to the Church: first, that he should be the seed of the woman; then, that he should be of the posterity of Abraham; then, of the tribe of Judah; then, of the house of David; then, that he should be born of a virgin. {Isa 7:14}
{a} Serm. xii. in Cantic.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, and pray…
How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, and pray for his restitution? which the following words imply that he did.
I have rejected him from reigning over Israel: the manifestation of my peremptory will should make thee submit to my pleasure.
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Fill thine horn with oil; which was used in the inauguration of kings, as 1Sa 10:1; 1Ki 1:39. But here it is used in the designation of a king, though David was not actually made king by it, but still remained a subject, as is evident from 1Sa 24:6. And the reason of this anticipation was, partly the comfort of Samuel, and other good men, against their great fears in case of Saul’s death, of which they expected every day to hear; and partly the assurance of David’s title, which otherwise would have been very doubtful. For the prevention of which doubts, it was very meet that the same person and prophet who had anointed Saul, might now, upon God’s rejection of Saul, anoint David to succeed him upon his death; and because Samuel was now not far from his death, and was to die before Saul, it was fit that David’s anointing should be hastened and done before its proper time.
I have provided me a king: this phrase is very emphatical, and implies the difference between this and the former king. Saul was a king of the people’s providing, he was the product of their inordinate and sinful desires; they desired him for themselves, and for their own glory and safety, as they supposed; but this is a king of my own providing, one that I have spied out, one of that tribe to which I have allotted the kingdom, Gen 49:10. A king for me; not one to gratify the people’s desires, but to fulfil all my will, as is said, Act 13:22, and to serve my glory. Or, my king; the Hebrew phrase, to me, or for me, being commonly used for the word mine.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 6 Samuel had retired to his own house in Ramah,…
Samuel had retired to his own house in Ramah, with a resolution not to appear any more in public business, but to addict himself wholly to the instructing and training up of the sons of the prophets, over whom he presided, as we find, Sa1 19:20. He promised himself more satisfaction in young prophets than in young princes; and we do not find that, to his dying day, God called him out to any public action relating to the state, but only here to anoint David.
I. God reproves him for continuing so long to mourn for the rejection of Saul. He does not blame him for mourning on that occasion, but for exceeding in his sorrow: How long wilt thou mourn for Saul? Sa1 16:1. We do not find here that he mourned at all for the setting aside of his own family and the deposing of his own sons; but for the rejecting of Saul and his seed he mourns without measure, for the former was done by the people's foolish discontent, this by the righteous wrath of God. Yet he must find time to recover himself, and not go mourning to his grave, 1. Because God has rejected him, and he ought to acquiesce in the divine justice, and forget his affection to Saul; if God will be glorified in his ruin, Samuel ought to be satisfied. Besides, to what purpose should he weep? The decree has gone forth, and all his prayers and tears cannot prevail for the reversing of it, Sa2 12:22, Sa2 12:23. 2. Because Israel shall be no loser by it, and Samuel must prefer the public welfare before his own private affection to his friend. "Mourn not for Saul, for I have provided me a king. The people provided themselves a king and he proved bad, now I will provide myself one, a man after my own heart." See Psa 89:20; Act 13:22. "If Saul be rejected, yet Israel shall not be as sheep having no shepherd. I have another in store for them; let thy joy of him swallow up thy grief for the rejected prince."
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II. He sends him to Bethlehem, to anoint one of the sons of Jesse, a person probably not unknown to Samuel. Fill thy horn with oil. Saul was anointed with a glass vial of oil, scanty and brittle, David with a horn of oil, which was more plentiful and durable; hence we read of a horn of salvation in the house of his servant David, Luk 1:69.
III. Samuel objects the peril of going on this errand (Sa1 16:2): If Saul hear it, he will kill me. By this it appears. 1. That Saul had grown very wicked and outrageous since his rejection, else Samuel would not have mentioned this. What impiety would he not be guilty of who durst kill Samuel? 2. That Samuel's faith was not so strong as one would have expected, else he would not have thus feared the rage of Saul. Would not he that sent him protect him and bear him out? But the best men are not perfect in their faith, nor will fear be wholly cast out any where on this side heaven. But this may be understood as Samuel's desire of direction from heaven how to manage this matter prudently, so as not to expose himself, or any other, more than needed.
IV. God orders him to cover his design with a sacrifice: Say, I have come to sacrifice; and it was true he did, and it was proper that he should, when he came to anoint a king, Sa1 11:15. As a prophet, he might sacrifice when and where God appointed him; and it was not all inconsistent with the laws of truth to say he came to sacrifice when really he did so, thought he had also a further end, which he thought fit to conceal. Let him give notice of a sacrifice, and invite Jesse (who, it is probable, was the principal man of the city) and his family to come to the feast upon the sacrifice; and, says God, I will show thee what thou shalt do. Those that go about God's work in God's way shall be directed step by step, wherever they are at a loss, to do it in the best manner.
V. Samuel went accordingly to Bethlehem, not in pomp, or with any retinue, only a servant to lead the heifer which he was to sacrifice; yet the elders of Bethlehem trembled at his coming, fearing it was an indication of God's displeasure against them and that he came to denounce some judgment for the iniquities of the place. Guilt causes fear. Yet indeed it becomes us to stand in awe of God's messengers, and to tremble at his word. Or they feared it might be an occasion of Saul's displeasure against them, for probably they knew how much he was exasperated at Samuel, and feared he would pick a quarrel with them for entertaining him. They asked him, "Comest thou peaceably? Art thou in peace thyself, and not flying from Saul? Art thou at peace with us, and not come with any message of wrath?" We should all covet earnestly to stand upon good terms with God's prophets, and dread having the word of God, or their prayers, against us. When the Son of David was born king of the Jews all Jerusalem was troubled, Mat 2:3. Samuel kept at home, and it was a strange thing to see him so far from his own house: they therefore concluded it must needs be some extraordinary occasion that brought him, and feared the worst till he satisfied them (Sa1 16:5): "I come peaceably, for I come to sacrifice, not with a message of wrath against you, but with the methods of peace and reconciliation; and therefore you may bid me welcome and need not fear my coming; therefore sanctify yourselves, and prepare to join with me in the sacrifice, that you may have the benefit of it." Note, Before solemn ordinances there must be a solemn protestation. When we are to offer spiritual sacrifices it concerns us, by sequestering ourselves from the world and renewing the dedication of ourselves to God, to sanctify ourselves. When our Lord Jesus came into the world, though men had reason enough to tremble, fearing that his errand was to condemn the world, yet he gave full assurance that he came peaceably, for he came to sacrifice, and he brought his offering along with him: A body hast thou prepared me. Let us sanctify ourselves, that we may have an interest in his sacrifice. Note, Those that come to sacrifice should come peaceably; religious exercises must not be performed tumultuously.
VI. He had a particular regard to Jesse and his sons, for with them his private business lay, with which, it is likely, he acquainted Jesse at his first coming, and took up his lodging at his house. He spoke to all the elders to sanctify themselves, but he sanctified Jesse and his sons by praying with them and instructing them. Perhaps he had acquaintance with them before, and it appears (Sa1 20:29, where we read of the sacrifices that family had) that it was a devout religious family. Samuel assisted them in their family preparations for the public sacrifice, and, it is probable, chose out David, and anointed him, at the family-solemnities, before the sacrifice was offered or the holy feast solemnized. Perhaps he offered private sacrifices, like Job, according to the number of them all (Job 1:5), and, under colour of that, called for them all to appear before him. When signal blessings are coming into a family they ought to sanctify themselves.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–13 And the Lord said unto Samuel,.... In a vision…
And the Lord said unto Samuel,.... In a vision or dream, or by an articulate voice: how long wilt thou mourn for Saul? he does not blame him for mourning, but for mourning so long; but how long that was cannot be said; and though his affection for him might cause him to indulge to it, yet it was in vain, seeing the sentence was irreversible:
seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? that is, his posterity; for he himself reigned as long as he lived, though in a very inglorious manner:
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fill thine horn with oil; with common oil; for that this was the holy anointing oil kept in the tabernacle, as the Jewish writers generally suppose, with which they say David and Solomon, and the kings of Judah, were anointed, there is no reason to believe; since the tabernacle, where this oil was, was at a distance from Samuel, and which seems to have been only for the anointing of the priests. This was not a phial he was bid to take, as when he anointed Saul; but an horn, denoting the abundance of gifts bestowed on David, and the firmness and duration of his kingdom:
and go, and I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite; the son of Obed, whom Boaz begat of Ruth the Moabitess, Rut 4:21.
for I have provided me a king among his sons; but which he says not; this was reserved for an later discovery; however God had in his own mind picked him, whom he would hereafter make known; this was a king for himself, raised up to fulfil his will; Saul was chosen by him, but then it was at the request of the people, and so he was rather their king than his; but this was not at their desire, nor with their knowledge, but of his own good will and pleasure; the one was given in wrath, and the other in love; the one was to the rejection of God as King, the other to the rejection of Saul by the will of God.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 13 Samuel is appointed to anoint one of the sons…
Samuel is appointed to anoint one of the sons of Jesse king, ver. 1-5. The elder sons are passed by, and David anointed, ver. 6- 13. Saul growing melancholy is eased by David's music, ver. 14- 23.
Mourn - And pray for his restitution, which the following words imply he did. Oil - Which was used in the inauguration of kings. But here it is used in the designation of a king; for David was not actually made king by it, but still remained a subject. And the reason of this anticipation was the comfort of Samuel, and other good men, against their fears in case of Saul's death, and the assurance of David's title, which otherwise would have been doubtful. I have provided - This phrase is very emphatical, and implies the difference between this and the former king. Saul was a king of the people's providing, he was the product of their sinful desires: but this is a king of my own providing, to fulfil all my will, and to serve my glory.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 13 Samuel is sent from Ramah to Bethlehem, to anoint…
CHAPTER XVI
Samuel is sent from Ramah to Bethlehem, to anoint David, 1-13.
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The Spirit of the Lord departs from Saul, and an evil spirit
comes upon him, 14.
His servants exhort him to get a skilful harper to play before
him, 15, 16.
He is pleased with the counsel, and desires them to find such a
person, 17.
They recommend David, 18.
He is sent for, comes, plays before Saul, and finds favour in
his sight, 19-23.
NOTES ON CHAP. XVI
Verse 1. Fill thine horn with oil] Horns appear to have been the ancient drinking vessels of all nations; and we may suppose that most persons who had to travel much, always carried one with them, for the purpose of taking up water from the fountains to quench their thirst. Such a horn had Samuel; and on this occasion he was commanded to fill it with oil, for the purpose of consecrating a king over Israel from among the sons of Jesse.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12 1Sa 16:1. How long wilt thou mourn for Saul?…
1Sa 16:1. How long wilt thou mourn for Saul? — And pray for his restoration, which the following words imply he did. Fill thy horn with oil — Which was used in the inauguration of kings. But here it was used in the designation of a king; for David was not actually made king by it, but still remained a subject. And the reason of this anticipation was the comfort of Samuel, and other good men, against their fears in case of Saul’s death, and the assurance of David’s title, which otherwise would have been doubtful. I have provided me a king — This phrase is very emphatical, and implies the difference between this and the former king. Saul was a king of the people’s providing; he was the product of their sinful desires; but this is a king of my own providing, to fulfil all my will, and to serve my glory.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv2, 4, 10, 11, 13 It was the purpose of God that David should…
It was the purpose of God that David should be anointed at this time as Saul’s successor, and as the ancestor and the type of His Christ. It was not the purpose of God that Samuel should stir up a civil war, by setting up David as Saul’s rival. Secrecy, therefore, was a necessary part of the transaction. But secrecy and concealment are not the same as duplicity and falsehood. Concealment of a good purpose, for a good purpose, is clearly justifiable. There is therefore nothing in the least inconsistent with truth in the occurrence here related. Compare Exo 7:16; Exo 8:1; Exo 9:13.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13 How long. It seems his tears were not soon…
How long. It seems his tears were not soon dried up, as he lamented the fall of one whom he had formerly so much admired, and perceived what evils would ensue. (Salien) --- He had hoped that the decree might have been revokable. But God now convinces him of the contrary, by ordering him to go and anoint a successor. --- Horn. Such vessels were formerly very common, and were used to contain liquor, and instead of cups, 3 Kings i. 39. (Horace, ii. Sat. 2.) The ancient silver cups, at Athens, resembled horns. (Atheneus xi. 7.) But the northern nations, particularly Denmark, &c., used horns to drink, as the Georgians still do. The rims are ornamented with silver, &c. (Pliny, [Natural History?] xi. 37.) (Chardin) (Calmet) --- A fragile vile was not used, but a horn, to denote the duration and abundance of David’s reign. (Rupert) (Menochius)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 The Decline Of Saul’s Kingdom, And The Elevation Of…
THIRD DIVISION
The Decline Of Saul’s Kingdom, And The Elevation Of David. From Saul’s Rejection To His Death
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1 Samuel 16-31
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FIRST SECTION
Early History of David, the Anointed of the Lord
1 Samuel 16
I. Choice and Anointing of David as King through Samuel. Chap: 1Sa_16:1-13
1And the Lord [Jehovah] said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? Fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided1 me a king 2among his sons. And Samuel said, How can I go? If Saul hear it, he will kill me. And the Lord [Jehovah] said, Take an heifer with thee, and say, I am come 3to sacrifice to the Lord [Jehovah]. And call Jesse to the sacrifice,2 and I will show thee what thou shalt do; and thou shalt anoint unto me him whom I name 4unto thee. And Samuel did3 that which the Lord [Jehovah] spake, and came to Bethlehem. And the elders of the town [city]4 trembled at his coming [went 5tremblingly to meet him], and said, Comest thou peaceably [in peace]?5 And he said, Peaceably [In peace]; I am come to sacrifice unto the Lord [Jehovah]; sanctify yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice.6 And he sanctified Jesse and 6his sons, and called them to the sacrifice. And it came to pass, when they were come, that he looked on Eliab and said, Surely the Lord’s [Jehovah’s] anointed Isaiah 7 before him. But [And] the Lord [Jehovah] said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance [appearance],7 or [nor] on the height of his stature, because [for] I have refused him; for the Lord [Jehovah] seeth8 not as man seeth, for man looketh 8on the outward appearance, but the Lord [Jehovah] looketh on the heart. Then [And] Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, 9Neither hath the Lord [Jehovah] chosen this [him]. Then [And] Jesse made Shammah to pass by. And he said, Neither hath the Lord [Jehovah] chosen this 10[him]. Again, [And] Jesse made seven of his sons to pass before Samuel. And 11Samuel said unto Jesse,9 The Lord [Jehovah] hath not chosen these. And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children [the young men]? And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest, and behold, he keepeth the sheep. And Samuel said 12unto Jesse, Send and fetch him, for we will not sit down till he come hither. And he sent and brought him in. Now [And] he was ruddy,10 and [om. and] withal of a beautiful countenance [with beautiful eyes withal], and goodly11 to look to 13[at]. And the Lord [Jehovah] said, Arise, anoint him, for this is Hebrews 11 Then [And] Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren. And the Spirit of the Lord [Jehovah] came upon David from that day forward. So [And] Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1Sa_16:1, exhibiting Samuel in deep grief for Saul, connects itself immediately with 1Sa_15:35. We find him here in the same sorrow in which we left him. Samuel mourned for Saul in view of the great gifts of grace which he had received, but had nullified and lost by his disobedience and impenitence, in view of the Lord’s honor, which he had violated, and in view of the people, for whom he had by his conduct turned God’s blessing into a curse. Samuel’s grief was an expression of the same love which drove him to intercession for Saul and at the same time filled him with holy anger (1Sa_15:11). It was sorrow for Saul’s rejection, but there was not (Brenz, Tremellius) connected with it prayer for the restoration of Saul to his former relation to God and for the renewal of his kingdom, of which nothing is said.—The question: How long? contains a divine reproof, indicating (so the words: “seeing I have rejected him from being king over Israel”) that Samuel by his deep, long-continued grief over Saul’s condition (a lamentable one under all circumstances and evermore) was out of sympathy with God and God’s decrees and ways, which are clearly announced in these words and in 1Sa_15:35. Calvin: “The excellent prophet here displays something of human weakness. Samuel here looked on a vessel made by the invisible hand of God Himself utterly broken and minished, and his emotion thereat shows his pious and holy affection,—yet he is not without sin; not at all that the feeling is evil, but because it is excessive.” From his own sad thoughts and feelings Samuel is directed through the Spirit of the Lord to the thoughts and the will of the Lord in respect to the Theocracy, as organ of which Saul is rejected. [Comp. the similar dealing with Elijah, 1 Kings 19—Tr.]. The Lord commands him to enter into His ways, which are to lead to the choice and consecration of another as instrument of the royal authority of God over His people. The divine command is: Go and anoint one of the sons of Jesse the Bethlehemite, whom I have chosen to be king over Israel.—This command presupposes an exact acquaintance on Samuel’s part with Jesse and his house, and the presence in his family of the conditions necessary for the theocratic kingdom. That the family was a wealthy one is certain from 1Sa_16:11. That true godliness and piety reigned in it appears from Samuel’s acquaintance and intercourse with it, and the sacrifice which he held in the house.
1Sa_16:2. Heretofore Samuel had grieved for Saul—now he fears him: How can I go? if Saul hear it he will slay me.—This protest against the plain direction of the voice of God rests naturally on the fact that Saul was still, notwithstanding the divine sentence of rejection, rightful king of Israel, and would regard the designation of another to the office (if it could not be kept concealed from him) as an act of treachery and revolt, even though Samuel should plead the divine command in his justification. “He will kill me,”—to explain these words, therefore, we need not suppose that the evil spirit had already driven Saul to madness. Even if that were the case, Saul might in his seasons of quiet also resolve to slay the betrayer of the kingdom.—This fear of Samuel is overborne by inspired direction as to what he is to do to conceal the act; he is to go to hold a sacrificial feast, and so announce himself. This divine command supposes that Samuel did not confine his circuits to certain holy places (1Sa_7:16) where the people appeared in large numbers, but visited other places to hold public divine service, and that Jesse consequently could not be surprised at his appearing in Bethlehem for such a purpose. Berl. Bib.: “People must have been accustomed to Samuel’s coming to this place and the other to sacrifice, which was very proper for a prophet, especially at the time when Shiloh was desecrated.” This throws a new light on Samuel’s combination of priestly work with prophetical.—No shade of untruthfulness rests on this command. As Saul’s anointing (1Sa_10:16) was concealed, so David’s anointing also is, according to the divine will, yet to remain a secret. Samuel was to keep this secret. Its concealment behind the sacrifice was not a lie.12 Calvin: “It is to be observed that he practiced no simulation, but said what was true, namely, that he had come to sacrifice; but he put fraud on no one, he deceived no one, he used no bad arts, but conformed to the divine command, because it was not meet to publish God’s design, when as yet God wished it to be concealed;—here lurked no falsehood, and the end was good, unconnected with fraud or treachery, but God wished David’s anointing to be carefully kept as a secret deposit, so to speak, and a pledge.”
1Sa_16:3. The performance of the divine commission in the sacrificial feast. Three directions are to be distinguished: 1) Samuel is to invite Jesse to the sacrificial meal; it is a slain-offering (זֶבַח) that is spoken of, with which was connected a feast; he is to be associated with Jesse in the feast in the narrower circle of the family. “Call in the sacrifice” is construct. prœgn. for “call to take part in the sacrifice;” 2) Samuel is to await direction from above. “I will tell thee what thou shalt do.” This exhibits the specifically divine factor (of which Samuel is to be organ) in the choice of the new king of Israel; 3) He is to anoint as king him whom God shall name.
1Sa_16:4. And Samuel did, etc. The troubled condition of soul which could not accept God’s thoughts and ways disappeared before the strict obedience of the will, which bowed before the Lord’s will. The elders of Bethlehem came tremblingly to meet him with the question: Comest thou in peace? (The Sing. וַיֹּאמֶר “said,” because one spoke in the name of all. Comp. Jdg_8:6; Num_32:25). This question does not mean “Has a misfortune occurred, as the cause of thy coming?” nor does it express fear of punishment for some special misdoing (in the pillaging) in the Amalekite war, but it is the involuntary utterance of the fear which Samuel’s sudden, unexpected appearance produced; for though he no longer formally held the office of judge, he yet appeared here and there (as formerly in his judicial circuits) to make unexpected visitation and exercise his watch-office as prophet. On such occasions it was his principal care to administer earnest rebuke, and to remove the evil that he found. To this refers the fright of the elders at meeting him, and the question whether he came in peace or for good?
1Sa_16:5. He answers the question in the affirmative and so quiets the Bethlehemites, declares the purpose of his coming to be to institute a sacrifice for the people of Bethlehem, and directs them to sanctify themselves and take part with him in the sacrifice. The “sanctifying” means the consecration of the person to the service of God by washing the body and putting on clean garments as symbol of the cleansing of the soul for communion with the holy God. Comp. Gen_35:2; Exo_19:10; Exo_19:22. (The same pregnant construction here as in 1Sa_16:3). While directing the elders to take part in the offering, Samuel gives a special invitation to Jesse and his sons (by the same direction, to sanctify themselves) to partake of the sacrificial meal with him. [It is to be observed that the Heb. text here makes no difference between the invitation to Jesse’s family and the general invitation to the elders. The Sept. and the Chald. make the former refer to the sacrifice and the latter to the sacrificial meal. It seems that there was a special meeting with Jesse and his sons, but it is not so stated in the text. After 1Sa_16:5, indeed, nothing more is said of the sacrifice, the narrative taking this for granted, and going on to the main occurrence.—Tr.].—After the ark was removed from the Tabernacle and Shiloh had thus ceased to be the place of worship and sacrifice for Israel, there were several places where altars for sacrifices were erected. The offering of the sacrifice is here to be put after 1Sa_16:5, and not (Then.) after the words “in the midst of his brethren” 1Sa_16:13, for the “coming” in 1Sa_16:6 refers to the feast, as appears from the words in 1Sa_16:11, “we will not sit down,” and from the general connection. Samuel thought (lit., said) that Jesse’s eldest son, Eliab, was surely the Lord’s anointed.
1Sa_16:7. The difference is sharply stated between the divine thoughts and human judgment according to human standards. The voice of God inwardly teaches Samuel two things: 1) in respect of Eliab’s person, he is not to infer from his imposing exterior that he was the chosen of the Lord. With this humbling correction, which connects itself with 1Sa_16:1-2, he is taught 2) a general truth respecting the difference between divine and human modes of thought and judgment: Not what man sees—to which we must supply the words “sees the Lord.” This ellipsis is not so hard as to require us to suppose (Then.) that these words have fallen out of the text. The thought naturally fills itself out from what precedes. The ground of the truth, that human judgment and divine judgment are not the same but different, is now declared.—For man looks on the eyes, but the Lord looks on the heart, that is, man judges according to the outward appearance,—the expression “the eyes” is not (with Sept.) to be exchanged for “countenance,” but to be retained as signifying the outward appearance, which concentrates itself in the eyes, in contrast with the heart or the centre of the inner life, whence springs man’s will and his whole spiritual frame. Not according to the agreeable appearance which commends itself to the eyes, but according to the moral worth hidden in the depths of the heart, according to the disposition of soul that pleases Him does the Lord judge, who proveth the heart and the reins.13
1Sa_16:8. The same decision is announced with reference to the second son, Abinadab. And so 1Sa_16:9 as to the third, Shammah. Thus Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. But Samuel’s decision, according to the voice of God within him, is always negative. The “he said” in 1Sa_16:8-9 refers to Samuel, and = “he thought.” We are, therefore, not thence to suppose that Samuel had communicated to Jesse the object of his mission. It is not till 1Sa_16:10 that the words “to Jesse” are added, expressly indicating an address of Samuel to him: the Lord hath not chosen these. It does not, however, follow, even from these words, that Samuel made Jesse a sharer in the divine secret. According to the following narrative none of the family (David’s father and brothers), know anything of David’s high destiny. That address to Jesse is merely a negative declaration that the divine selection, with which Samuel was concerned, and which in the absence of express intimation of its nature, might refer to the prophetic office, rested on none of these seven sons. Samuel’s word was by reason of its indefiniteness a riddle, whose solution Jesse was to attain only from the following development of the history of his youngest son.
1Sa_16:11. To Samuel’s question whether these are all the young men, Jesse answers that the youngest yet remains.14 The prophet of the Lord is not satisfied with the presentation of the seven sons; he bids the father send for the youngest, before they sit down to the sacrificial meal. נָסֹב = “we will not surround,” namely, the table, we will not sit around it to eat till he come. So De Wette, Ewald, Maurer. The explanation: “we will not turn about, namely, to proceed to something else, but will remain here waiting” (Then., Bött.) does not suit the situation as given by the context.
1Sa_16:12. David’s appearance, ruddy, of the color of the hair, red hair being regarded in the East (as contrasting with the usual black color) as especially beautiful. עִם (as 1Sa_17:42; Ecc_2:16) used adverbially = “at the same time,” “withal;” beautiful of eyes and good, pleasing in appearance. In this youngest son were united the beauty of the oldest, and that which is well-pleasing to the Lord, what “the Lord looks on,” a heart and mind after the will and good pleasure of the Lord (1Sa_16:7). And so the divine decision is announced to Samuel: Arise, anoint him, for this is he. He is thus freed from all doubts and suspicions. Sure of his course, Samuel (1Sa_16:13) performs the ceremony of anointing David (the object and meaning of the act being still an enigma to Jesse and his other sons) in the midst of his brethren or from among [Germ. unter] his brethren; the Heb. preposition (בְּקֶרֶב) may mean either. Thenius adopts the latter on the ground that the brothers had gone away, but this is not required by the narrative. Samuel’s words in the second half of 1Sa_16:11 rather imply that they were all there. [Abarbanel and Philippson also adopt this view of the word, “among” his brethren, that is, “he alone of his brethren,” because this better explains their after ignorance.—Tr.]. In any case the special significance, which God designed this anointing to have, was hidden from them. Anointing was always a symbol of the divine impartation of the Spirit from above on the Anointed. The impartation began immediately for David: The Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward.—This could not have happened, if the religious-ethical conditions had not been present in David’s heart. This impartation of the Spirit was (along with the general gift of the divine Spirit) the special endowment with gifts and powers for the special theocratic royal calling, to which David was chosen and consecrated by this anointing according to divine decree and will. The word “from that day forward” denotes the continuity of the impartation of the Spirit to David’s inner life, and indicates its unbroken development under the guidance of the divine Spirit to full fitness and capacity for the royal calling. Keil properly calls attention to the fact that nothing is here said of any explanatory word of Samuel touching this point, as in Saul’s anointing, 1Sa_10:1. Whether David was now informed by Samuel of the meaning of the act is uncertain. Most probably he was not informed, since it was performed in the presence of the brothers, and its object was (according to the will of God) to remain concealed from them and the people. [It seems likely that a royal destiny for David would be the last thing in the minds of his brothers, for his higher intellectual and spiritual gifts were apparently at this time unknown to them. Gradually the course of events led them and the people (so Abigail 1Sa_25:30) and probably Saul (1Sa_28:17) to look on David as Saul’s successor, and David would receive intimations concerning his destiny from Samuel. There is, therefore, no serious difficulty in understanding the silence of the brothers in the succeeding history.—Tr]. Samuel went to Ramah. That David was in constant communication with him (and perhaps with the prophetic school there) is quite certain from the following history. Comp. 19, 20 sq. In this intercourse with the prophet of the Lord he learned the meaning of Samuel s enigmatical act, and, under the progressive occupation and enlightenment of his inner life by the Spirit from above, received the knowledge of the duties of his royal calling and the preparation to fulfill them. For the present his election and anointing to be king of Israel remained a divine secret.
HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL
1. The affairs of the kingdom of God go their way without break or halt according to God’s high thoughts and decrees, though human sin and its attendant judgment (as in Saul’s case), or human weakness (as in Samuel’s immediate grief for Saul) may seem to hinder the plans of the divine wisdom. “In the history of Israel the concealing curtain of human purpose and action is lifted, and the thus unveiled, all-moving and all-guiding hand of Him of whom it is written, ‘He worketh all things according to the counsel of his own will’ (Eph_1:11), appears therein” (F. W. Krummacher, David, p. 1). But it is also precisely by human sin and foolishness that the history of God’s kingdom under the guidance of the divine wisdom and providence receives new occasions and impulses to wider and higher development according to the aims which God sets before Himself.
2. Samuel’s grief for Saul, transgressing the bounds set by God and thus displeasing to Him, is easily explicable psychologically not merely from natural human feeling, but also from Samuel’s theocratic calling and prophetic official interest. Considered from this point of view also it is not in conflict with Samuel’s immovable prophetic opposition to Saul and his sentence of rejection, but is at the same time the most striking refutation of the false conception of Samuel’s relation to Saul in this prophetic-judicial bearing towards him, which makes the latter a pitiable sacrifice to priestly jealousy and one-sidedness (see the literature in Winer, to which is to be added M. Dunker, Geschichte des Alterthums I.).
3. The concealing of the truth, when there is no design to deceive, when its utterance is required by no duty, and when the interests of the moral order of the world and of the kingdom of God are in no wise injured, is far from being untruthfulness, much less falsehood; it is rather duty and obedience to the divine will.
4. The beginnings of David’s theocratic life, as they present themselves in his election and calling to be king of Israel, have their roots (when we look back in the light of the divine history of revelation) in the consecrated ground of a family in Judah distinguished in history for piety and godliness, which belonged with its traditions to the shepherd-city of Bethlehem. The family whence Jesse sprang was from the beginning one of the most prominent in the tribe of Judah. One of its ancestors, Nahshon, stood at the head of the whole tribe in the march through the wilderness (Rth_4:20; Num_1:7; Num_2:3). “How remarkably the noblest and loveliest theocratic piety was nourished in this family, even in the degenerate times of the Judges, appears in the history of Ruth and Boaz; the latter a type of theocratic integrity, the former a truly consecrated flower of heathendom turning longingly to the light of divine revelation in Israel” (Kurtz in Herz. III., 299). Jesse, the son of Obed, was the grandson of this Boaz. His intimacy with Samuel speaks for his piety and that of his family. David was the noblest scion of this family, far excelling his brothers (1Sa_16:7; 1Sa_16:10) in heart-piety and theocratic feeling. His posture of heart, which stood the divine test and was well-pleasing to God, was the fruit of the piety of his father’s house, whence sprang the humble, consecrated disposition15 in which, after his anointing, he ripened more and more in soul under the guidance of God’s Spirit to his high calling of theocratic royalty, coming by manifold experiences to a constantly clearer knowledge of this calling, and so guided by the Lord that not only the riddle of his dumb consecration was ever approaching solution, but also “from the course of events (connected with Samuel’s former words to Saul) others, as Jonathan, and even Abigail, concluded that David was destined to be king, 1Sa_23:17; 1Sa_20:30” (v. Gerl.).—But also, when we look forward in the light of divine revelation, the early part of David’s consecrated life contains many typical elements as factual prophecies or prefigurations of the future. His shepherd-life,16 continued after he was anointed, in which on the one hand self-consecrated he immerses himself in the contemplation of God’s revelation in nature and in His word, and on the other hand must be ready at any moment to meet the greatest dangers and exhibit boldness and prowess (1Sa_17:34-37), presents on these two sides types of his religious life as king, the Spirit of God developing on the basis of this double natural ground two sides of his character, which not merely co-exist, but are interwoven with each other: 1) intensively the innermost concentration and immersion of his thoughtful, meditative heart into the depths of God’s revelation of His power, grace, and wisdom in nature, word, history, and into the depths of the sinful human heart, whence sprang in his psalms partly the inspired praise of God with furtherance and deepening in every direction of the knowledge of God, partly advance in the knowledge of the natural grace-lacking condition of the human heart; 2) extensively his admirable energy and heroic courage in the life of conflict, which he had evermore to lead. In the hiddenness of his royal calling from the people, the gradual ripening of his inner life for his office and the lowliness of the sphere whence he was raised to the throne, he is a type of Christ who, sprung from him according to the flesh, and by the prophets called “Son of David” and “Sprout of Jesse” (Isa_11:1; Isa_11:10), passes his holy youth in privacy, gradually develops therein for his Messianic calling, and then at the end of this divine-human development steps forth from the lowliness of a natural-human life as the king of Israel, who completes in his person and work God’s revelations for the establishment of His kingdom on earth, and therein enters on the war of subjugation against the ungodly world. From David’s quiet anointing in the modest family-circle at Bethlelem to be King David, up to the birth, in the obscurity of a stall at Bethlehem, of the “Son of David,” the “King of the Jews,” there is an unbroken series of divine revelations, the beginning and end of which are bound together by the descent of the Saviour of the world from the Tribe of Judah “according to the flesh.” And as heathendom entered the principal line of the tribe of Judah (whence came Jesse’s house and David) in three distinguished women,17 thus sharing in the derivation of the Messiah from Jesse’s family,—and so the impulse implanted (by the fundamental blessing, Gen_12:3) in the seed of Abraham towards union with heathendom, which takes mostly a thoroughly perverted direction in all Israel’s early history, showed itself in this family (consciously or unconsciously) in a normal and truly theocratic way—so we see, at the end of this development of the kingdom of God in Israel which goes from Bethlehem to Bethlehem, heathendom approaching in Bethlehem the new-born king of the Jews (having a natural right in Him because of its natural God-ordained share in His incarnation) in order to pay Him its homage. [This last statement expresses a parallelism, not a typical relation. That certain heathen women accepted the God of Israel, and that certain heathen astronomers believed in the divinely-sent king of the Jews are both facts illustrative of the promise to Abraham, but we cannot call them type and antitype, since they express not an essential principle, but a concomitant phenomenon of the fact of redemption. So the numerous cases in which God raised His servants from low to high position (as in David’s life) are illustrations of a mode of divine action, and thus parallel to our Lord’s history, but the relation of the events in the Old and New Covenants is not that of type and antitype, since they express an incidental and not an essential spiritual principle. David, as prophet and king, is a type of the true prophet and king, and his experiences as a spiritual-minded man answer to the experiences of the man Jesus; but we cannot apply the term typical (without an unworthy lowering of its meaning) to all the outward resemblances between their lives.—Tr.]
5. The word: “Man looks on the eyes, God looks on the heart,” like that other: “Obedience is better than sacrifice” (1Sa_15:22) refers to the right condition of heart in a truly pious, humble disposition towards God the Lord. As we see clearly the difference between God’s word and man’s, between God’s thoughts and man’s, when Samuel says to himself “this or that one is the chosen one,” and the Spirit from above says to his heart “no,” and points him to one of whom he had not thought,—so we see according to their different standards the difference between divine and human judgment. The natural man judges according to the outward and visible; God, who proves and knows the heart and the reins (Psa_139:1-2; Psa_44:22 [21]), judges according to the character of the heart and the direction of the will, according to the disposition of soul.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
1Sa_16:1. Berlenb. Bible: We may indeed have compassion upon every one who is wretched because of his sin; but when God’s rejection is seen in continual hardening, that man must be given over to God’s righteous judgment.—God demands in the souls He sets apart for Himself and for the guidance of others, such a dying to all things, that He does not allow them to regard any other interest than His, whatever reason may be alleged.—Schlier: The Lord reproves Samuel, who had indeed meant well, but had not thought rightly; even a Samuel had to subject himself to God’s will, and with his whole mind and life send himself forward in God’s ways.
1Sa_16:2 sqq. Starke: Faint-heartedness and feebleness is found even in the best saints, Mat_8:26.—[Henry: From this it appears 1. That Saul was grown very wicked. 2. That Samuel’s faith was not very strong.—Tr.]—S. Schmid: In doubtful, trying and perilous circumstances it is best to ask God for counsel.—Cramer: A wise man is silent until he sees his time; but a fool cannot wait for the time, Eccl. 20:7; Ecc_3:7; Genesis 37.; Jdg_16:16.—J. Lange: There is a great difference between an untruth, when one says what is false, and silence, when one prudently keeps to himself what it is not necessary for others to know, 1Sa_10:15-16.—[We are not bound to tell everything unless we profess to be so doing, or the person asking has such peculiar relations to us as to warrant his expecting it. From failing to distinguish between deception and concealment, some persons condemn concealment and many justify deception. See an excellent discussion, with particular reference to this passage, in Thornwell’s “Discourses on Truth.”—Tr.]—Berl. Bible: Samuel speaks the truth, though he does not speak all the truth, but partly conceals and partly reveals, according to his present design.
1Sa_16:5. J. Lange: So too the worthy appropriation of the atonement of Christ unto salvation must, according to the evangelical covenant of grace, be made with real inner purification, Isa_1:16.
1Sa_16:6. S. Schmid: Human wisdom, however great, may yet be easily deceived accordingly even the wisest men must take care not to be too hasty in deciding.
1Sa_16:7. Cramer: God looks not at the outward work, but at the heart, and judges according to what His eyes see, Isa_11:3; Act_10:34.—Berl. Bible: Men decide only according to the appearance, and so are commonly deceived; but the Lord looks to the depths of the heart, its most delicate movements, and our character, which is all clear to Him, and better known than we are to ourselves, Psa_7:10; Psalms 139.; Heb_4:12-13.—True, deep-grounded humility of heart is the only “appearance” in man that pleases God (Isa_57:15); to this He looks as the ground of all virtues, for in it His fear has place. But where there is hidden pride, the fear of God is easily neglected.—[W. M. Taylor: We must not undervalue attention to the symmetrical discipline of the physical frame. Yet muscularity is not Christianity, and bodily beauty is not holiness. The character, therefore, ought to be the principal object of attention.—Tr.]—Osiander: Christians too must not be judged by the outward walk, since commonly, through the infirmities of their flesh, they have a bad appearance, while hypocrites, on the contrary, make a good show in their life, 2Ti_3:5; Mat_7:15; Rom_2:20.—[This is true as regards a mere plausible exterior; but Christians should be judged by their actions, Mat_7:20.—Tr.]
1Sa_16:9 sqq. S. Schmid: God knows how to try, often and long, the patience of believers to their good, that He may confirm them in their faith and patience.
1Sa_16:11. God is wont to exalt the lowly, that they may always remember their lowliness, and not be proud, but glory only in God who has exalted them, 1Co_1:27 sqq., 1Co_1:31. [Scott: Nor does He favor our children according to our fond partialities; but often most honors and blesses those who have been the least regarded.—Tr.]
1Sa_16:13. Cramer: Christians are temples and dwellings of the Holy Ghost, 1Co_6:19.—S. Schmid: When we have done our duty as commanded by God, we have to leave the rest to God’s government, Mat_10:23.
1Sa_16:1-13. F. W. Krummacher: Call and anointing of the shepherd-youth: 1) By what this was occasioned, 2) How it was performed.—[1Sa_16:7. Henry: “The Lord looketh on the heart.” 1. He knows the heart. 2. He judges of men by the heart.—Tr.]—J. Disselhoff (The History of King David, 14 sermons): The secret of the choice: 1) The Lord does not choose those who by peculiar gifts of nature are distinguished above others, but 2) He chooses those who faithfully profit by the greater or less measure of God’s grace which is granted them, 3) Who show this faithfulness by pure zeal and obedience in the labor entrusted to them, and 4) Those who even after some success in their labor do not boastfully press themselves forward, but remain in silent humility and quiet seclusion till the Lord brings them forth.
[1Sa_16:1. Remedies for improper mourning: 1) Submission to the will of God (“I have rejected him”); 2) Diligence in present work for God (“fill thy horn and go”); 3) Hope that God will bring a better future (“I have provided me a king”).
1Sa_16:4. Why do men so shrink from religious teachers?
1Sa_16:6-12. Difficulty of selecting men for important positions: 1) Causes: a) Intrinsic difficulty of properly estimating character. b) Management of partial friends. 2) Lessons: a) To avoid haste in deciding. b) To make diligent inquiries. c) To seek special Divine guidance.
1Sa_16:12. The youth of David. Handsome, energetic, brave, talented and accomplished, of good family, devout—faithfully pursuing an humble calling which developed manliness, and trusting God for the unknown future—O the glorious possibilities of youth! (Comp. Kitto, “Saul and David,” p. 197 sqq., Maurice, “Prophets and Kings,” p. 38 sq.)—Tr.]
Footnotes:
[1][1Sa_16:1. Literally “seen.” For similar use of ראה see Gen_22:8; Deu_33:21.—Tr.]
[2][1Sa_16:3. Chald. has “sacrificial meal,” perhaps simply as a connected fact, perhaps to avoid apparent infringement on priestly functions. Vulg. has victimam, other VSS. as Heb.—Tr.]
[3][1Sa_16:4. Sept.: “all that the Lord spake to him.”—Tr.]
[4][1Sa_16:4. It is better to give a uniform rendering to עִיר, the distinction between “town” and “city” not being found in Heb.—Tr.]
[5][1Sa_16:4. Literally: “is thy coming peace? and he said, peace.” Sept. inserts at the end of the verse the words “O Seer.”—Tr.]
[6][1Sa_16:5. Sept.: “and rejoice with me to-day,” probably a free reference to the festive character of the sacrificial meal; so Chald has “meal” instead of “sacrifice.”—Tr.]
[7][1Sa_16:7. מַרְאֵהוּ, Sept. ὄψιν, Erdmann “gestalt,” properly the whole personal appearance. Vulg. vultum, whence perhaps Eng. A. V. Luther, “gestalt.”—Tr.]
[8][1Sa_16:7. These words wanting (but understood) in the Heb., are found in the Sept. “God seeth,” and are for clearness better retained. Chald. and Syr. omit as Heb.; Vulg. supplies the words: ego judico.—Tr.]
[9][1Sa_16:10. Sept. (Vat. but not Alex.) omits “unto Jesse.” perhaps (Wellhausen) because Jesse was supposed not to know Samuel’s purpose. In 1Sa_16:6 Samuel’s “said” is equivalent to “thought.”—Tr.]
[10][1Sa_16:12. This word אַדְמנִֹי is found only here, 1Sa_17:42 and Gen_25:25, and in the two last passages seems to refer to the color of the skin. The ancient VSS. do not decide. Chald. and Syr. use same word here as in Gen_25:25; Vulg. rufus, Sept. πυῥῤάκης. Some moderns render “red-haired.” Levy renders the Chald. “red-eyed.”—Tr.]
[11][1Sa_16:12. Sept.: “goodly in appearance to the Lord,” and “for he is good,” to preserve the moral aspect of the act in reference to 1Sa_16:7.—Tr.]
[12][On the obvious political reason for this secresy see Bib. Comm. and Wordsworth in loco.—Tr.]
[13][See Psa_7:9; 1Ch_28:9; Luk_16:15.—Tr.]
[14][In 1Ch_2:13-15 only seven sons of Jesse are mentioned; one may have died in youth. The Syr. and Arab. write Elihu (1Ch_27:18) as seventh and David as eighth.—Tr.]
[15][That is to say, the instruction and example of his father’s house was God’s means of developing this disposition in him. Piety is never inherited, but is always the direct creation of the Holy Spirit of God (Joh_3:6).—Tr.]
[16][The care of the flocks, perhaps an honorable occupation in earlier times (Jacob, Moses), was in later times usually given to inferiors, as servants and younger children.—Tr.]
[17][Tamar (Genesis 38), Rahab (Mat_1:5). Ruth (Rth_4:13), to which some add Bathsheba (or, Bathshua), but this is uncertain.—Tr.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13 How can I go?--This is another instance of human…
How can I go?--This is another instance of human infirmity in Samuel. Since God had sent him on this mission, He would protect him in the execution.
I am come to sacrifice--It seems to have been customary with Samuel to do this in the different circuits to which he went, that he might encourage the worship of God.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 13 THE ANOINTING OF DAVID, 1Sa_16:1-13.
THE ANOINTING OF DAVID, 1Sa_16:1-13.
We are now about to be introduced to him who figures in the following history as one of the most interesting and honoured personages of the olden time — that neighbour of Saul, (1Sa_15:28,) that man after Jehovah’s heart, (1Sa_13:14,) who is to succeed Saul on the throne of Israel, and be the brightest star in all the host of kings. Soon after his anointing he is providentially introduced into the royal household, and still later, by his victory over Goliath, he suddenly becomes the idol of the nation’s heart. But from that proud day until the death of Saul he is persecuted by the jealous king, and flies from the court and from his home, and wanders up and down as an exile and outlaw.
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1. How long wilt thou mourn for Saul — Samuel’s affectionate nature passed through a bitter struggle before he could become reconciled to the will of Jehovah. He had loved Saul, and done his utmost to preserve him. All night he had cried unto the Lord for him, (1Sa_15:11,) and when he thought of his sad fall, and the wrath of God against him, he trembled for the safety of the kingdom.
Fill thine horn with oil — For the purpose of anointing another king. See note on 1Sa_10:1.
Jesse — The only one who bears this name in Scripture. His genealogy is given Rth_4:18-22, and 1Ch_2:5-12.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13 Ch. 1Sa_16:1-13. The choice of Saul’s successor
Ch. 1Sa_16:1-13. The choice of Saul’s successor
1. Jesse the Beth-lehemite] Grandson of Ruth the Moabitess, and belonging to the tribe of Judah through the line of his male ancestors (Rth_4:18-22).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 13 (1) How long wilt thou mourn for Saul?—The constant…
(1) How long wilt thou mourn for Saul?—The constant references to the influence Saul acquired, and the love and admiration he attracted, is a striking feature in this most ancient Book of Samuel, where the fall and ruin of the first Hebrew king is so pathetically related.
Though it tells us how Saul was tried, and found utterly wanting, still the record, which dwells on the evil qualities which ruined the great life, never loses an opportunity of telling how men like Samuel and David mourned for Saul, and how heroes like Jonathan loved the king who might have been so great. The ordinary reader of the story, but. for these touches of feeling, would be tempted to condemn with far too sweeping a condemnation the unhappy Saul, whose sun, as far as the world was concerned, set amidst clouds and thick darkness. Is it too much to think that for Saul the punishment ended here? that the bitter suffering caused by the solemn anger of his prophet friend, the gloomy last years of unhappiness and distrust, and the shame and defeat of the last campaign, purged away from the noble soul the scars left by the self-will and disobedience? The Divine Voice, so well-known to the seer, at length roused him from his mourning inactivity. Though that instrument, prepared with so much care, was broken, the work of God for which this instrument was created must be done. If Saul had failed, another must be looked for. and trained to fill the place of the deposed disobedient king.
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Fill thine horn with oil.—Heb., the oil; probably, as Stanley suggests, the consecrated oil preserved in the Tabernacle at Nob. (On the use to be made of this “sacred oil,” see Note on 1Sa_16:3.)
Jesse the Beth-lehemite.—From this day forward the village of Bethlehem obtained a strange notoriety in the annals of the world. David loved the village, where his father, most probably, was the sheik, or head man. “The future king never forgot the flavour,” as Stanley graphically reminds us, “of the water of the well of Bethlehem” (1Ch_11:17). It was Bethlehem, the cradle of the great ancestor, that was selected in the counsels of the Most High as the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
This Jesse was evidently a man of some wealth, Mohammedan tradition speaks of him as one who, in addition to his farming pursuits, was famous for his skill in making hair-cloths and sack-cloths.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13 CHOICE OF DAVID AS SUCCESSOR TO SAUL (vers. 1-13).
CHOICE OF DAVID AS SUCCESSOR TO SAUL (vers. 1-13).
How long writ thou mourn? The grief of Samuel was prolonged almost to a sinful extent, nor can we wonder at it. We who see Saul"s whole career, and know how deeply he fell, are in danger of discrediting his high qualities; but those who were witnesses of his military skill and prowess, and saw him and his heroic son raising the nation from its feebleness and thraldom to might and empire, must have given him an ungrudging admiration. Both David"s dirge (2Sa_1:19-27) and Samuel"s long mourning, and the unqualified obedience which he was able so quickly to extort from a high-spirited people unused to being governed, bear decisive testimony to his powers as a ruler and commander in war. But God now warns Samuel to mourn no longer. Saul"s rejection has become final, and God"s prophet must sacrifice his personal feelings, and prepare to carry out the purpose indicated in 1Sa_13:14 1Sa_15:28. We must not, however, conclude that Samuel"s sorrow had only been for Saul personally; there was danger for the whole nation in his conduct. If wilfulness and passion gained in him the upper hand, the band of authority would be loosed, and the old feebleness and anarchy would return, and Israel become even more hopelessly a prey to its former troubles. Samuel, therefore, is to go to Bethlehem and anoint there a son of Jesse. As this place lay at some distance from Ramah, and out of the circuit habitually traversed by Samuel as judge, he probably had but a general knowledge of the family. Evidently he had no acquaintance with David (vers. 11, 12); but as Jesse was a man of wealth and importance, his reputation had probably reached the prophet"s ears.
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HOMILETICS.
Vers. 1-5.
The progression of Providence.
The facts are
1. Samuel is aroused from his sorrow for Saul by a command from God toanoint a son of Jesse.
2. Being in fear, be is directed to go and offer sacrifice and await furtherinstructions.
3. Arriving at Bethlehem, he quiets the trembling elders and makespreparation for the sacrifice. It was natural for Samuel in his retirement to cherish sorrow for Saul; and his brooding over disappointment would become more habitual as no active measures were as yet taken to provide a successor. The section before us introduces a new phase in the development of God"s purposes. The part which Samuel was called on to play, and the spirit in which he set about it, bring out some truths of general import.
I PROVIDENCE PROCEEDS IN ITS ORDERLY COURSE IRRESPECTIVE OF PERSONAL DISAPPOINTMENTS AND FAILURES. Saul was a failure; Samuel was disappointed; and to human appearance a pause of very uncertain duration must be made in the progress of events. The attitude of Samuel was one of sorrowful waiting. He could only nurse his grief. To man it was as though a break had occurred in the continuous unfolding of the Divine purposes in relation to the Messianic kingdom. But this was only in appearance. God will not have his great purpose in Christ arrested in realisation by the failure of one or the brooding grief of another. During the separation of Samuel from Saul the unseen hand had been guarding and guiding a youth at Bethlehem, and now that his age and the circumstances of the family were ripening for action, the sorrowing prophet must rouse himself to share actively in the coming order of events. In every age God has his purposes to fulfil, and they continue to unfold notwithstanding the unfaithfulness of some and the complaining voice of others. The changes experienced by men are only incidents of a moment; the providence of God is one and continuous. In the process of establishing the Messianic kingdom, one by one men and kingdoms rose and disappeared, the people raged and submitted, wept and rejoiced, were now true and now false, but all the while the one Will was working on to the setting of the true King in Zion. In the history of the Christian Church, men of the type of Saul have been discarded and others of Samuel"s spirit have wept in solitude; but neither the failure nor the protracted sorrow have been allowed to arrest the silent, sure progression towards the goal of human existence. A careful survey shows, that as the wholesome economy of the globe is preserved and its ultimate issue being attained amidst and even by the storms of life, so there is a wise and merciful Providence working on in unbroken lines towards the realisation of the promise made to Abraham: "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.
II GOD"S SERVANTS SHOULD ADAPT THEMSELVES TO THE PROGRESSION OF HIS PROVIDENCE. Men of Samuel"s type must rouse themselves and join freely and confidently in the blessed progression. New conditions are daily arising. The instruments for the realising of the Divine purpose are limited only by his creative power. The earth is his, and he raises up a David when a David can best furnish the next link in the unbroken chain. Faculties and aptitudes need only circumstances to develop them into direct forces in the Messianic line. Samuel must brace himself to this aspect of things, and share in the honour and the toil of covering the failures of some by drawing out the better qualities of others. We must guard against the tendency to settle down into a mournful, inactive mood because, forsooth, the lines of Providence seem to us to be involved and past all disentanglement. There are men whose delight it is always to sing in the minor key. They overlook the fact that God"s will is being wrought out in spite of necessarily imperfect creatures. There is a voice calling on all such to arise, to cease to feed their soul on regrets, to believe that the "covenant is ordered in all things, and is sure.
III WE SHOULD AVOID A PREJUDGMENT OF GOD"S WAYS BASED ON PARTIAL KNOWLEDGE. The fear of Samuel finds its counterpart in the fear of many when called to undertake arduous duties. In his case it was based on partial information, and, therefore, while natural, was unreasonable. He appears to have concluded beforehand that he was to go and at once set up an actual king, and summon Israel to turn their allegiance from Saul to the new monarch. No doubt this would be exasperating to Saul, and by many might be regarded as treason. His reference to Saul"s killing him would not, therefore, express mere fear of death so much as his view of consequences which it was desirable to avoid by a less obtrusive policy. Samuel had no right to prejudge the appointment of God. He was simply told to go to Bethlehem with his horn of oil, for that a king was to be forthcoming from the sons of Jesse. We possess only partial information concerning many of the purposes and methods of God. We are not justified in forming a judgment of all his acts by what is made known to us. The morality of all he commands is ever the same, whatever the future developments may be. Every day will bring its light. We must not put more into God"s words than he intends. If he says, "Fill thine horn with oil and go to Jesse," we must not make that mean that we are to raise a standard of rebellion and place ourselves in peril. Men do put into Scripture what is not there, and then see consequences which arouse anxiety.
IV DUTY REQUIRES THAT WE PLACE OURSELVES IN A POSITION TO OBTAIN FURTHER LIGHT. Samuel, instead of dwelling on his fear, arising from an unwise prejudgment of God"s acts, was directed to go and do the one thing, and then look out for what next to do (ver. 3). He was to obey, and so be in a position to learn whether the next step was to raise publicly a standard of rebellion around a new king, or privately to anoint the coming man and let him await the removal by death of the people"s leader. We have here an important practical rule. By doing each duty fully as it comes we qualify for more light and greater aptitude for succeeding duties. When bent on the performance of duty, which in its issues may involve consequences serious and untraceable, it is well to associate religious exercises with them. It is as true for us as for Samuel that, in our sphere, the Lord will show us what next to do. Faithfulness day by day in small things will make us keen to recognise the Divine voice with reference to greater things.
HOMILIES BY B. DALE. Ver. 1. (BETHLEHEM.)
David"s parentage and education.
(References: Family register 1 Chronicles 1-3.
I Early life: shepherd, harper, champion chs, 16, 17.
II Courtier and outlaw life chs. 18-31 2Sa 1.
III Royal life in Hebron and Jerusalem 2 Samuel 2-24; 1 Kings 1, 2; 1 Chronicles 10-29.
While Saul pursued his own way at Gibeah, and Samuel mourned for him at Ramah, there dwelt at Bethlehem (twelve miles from the latter place) a shepherd youth who was destined to attain peerless renown as "a man of war," a ruler over men, an inspired poet and prophet, and (because of his fulfilling the idea of a truly theocratic king more perfectly than any other) a type of One to whom is given "a name which is above every name." Once and again the prophet had declared that Saul would be replaced by a worthier successor; (1Sa_13:14 1Sa_15:28) but who that successor should be he knew not until the inner voice said, "Arise, anoint him: for this is he" (ver. 12). DAVID (the beloved) was sixteen or eighteen years of age. His personal appearance is minutely described. In comparison with the gigantic Saul, and even his eldest brother, he was of short stature (ver. 7). He had reddish or auburn hair, and a fresh, florid complexion, which were rare among his black locked and swarthy countrymen; a pleasing countenance, keen, bright eyes, and a graceful form. He also possessed great physical strength, courage, intelligence, sagacity, and power of expression (ver. 18); above all, a firm trust in God and ardent love toward him. Many influences combined to make him what he was, and to develop his extraordinary gifts; which, after his anointing, advanced rapidly towards perfection. "It is impossible to draw a line of distinction between his life before and after his designation by Samuel; but we may well believe that those elements of character were already forming which began to shine forth when the Spirit of Jehovah came upon him." "Royalty was inborn in him." Among the formative influences referred to were those of
I FAMILY RELATIONSHIP.
1. He belonged to one of the most honourable families in Judah, the foremost tribe of Israel. His ancestor, Nahshon, was prince of the tribe; (Num_2:3 Num_7:12) another, Salmon, married Rahab, "who received the spies in peace"; (Mat_1:5) another, Boaz (great-grandfather of David), married Ruth the Moabitess, "a truly consecrated flower of heathendom turning longingly to the light of Divine revelation in Israel". (Rth_4:17) His father, Jesse, (Isa_11:1) who would often speak of them, had attained "a good old age", (1Sa_17:12) was in prosperous circumstances, had eight sons, of whom David was the youngest, and two daughters-in-law, (2Sa_17:25) whose children Abishai, Joab, and Asabel (sons of Zeruiah), and Amass (son of Abigail) were old enough to be his companions. Peculiar physical, mental, andmoral qualities often characterise certain families, are transmitted from one generation to another, and are sometimes concentrated in a single individual; and great family traditions tend to excite noble impulses and aspirations.
2. He was connected (through Tamar, Rahab, Ruth) with several Gentile races. This served to enlarge his sympathies, and accounts for his friendly intercourse with them. (1Sa_22:3; 1Ki_5:1) "No prince of Israel was ever on such friendly, intimate terms with the heathen about him" ("Expositor," 2:9).
3. He received a godly training. Jesse was a man of simple piety; (vers. 1, 1Sa_20:6) his mother (whose name has not been recorded) was a "handmaid of Jehovah". (Psa_86:16 Psa_116:16) "How much David owed to her we cannot doubt. The memory of it abode with him through all the trials and all the splendours of his subsequent career; and hence, whilst nowhere does he mention his father, he seems in these passages to appeal to the memory of his mother"s goodness, as at once a special token of the Divine favour to himself, and an additional reason that he should prove himself the servant of God" (W.L. Alexander).
II ORDINARY OCCUPATION. Whilst his brothers cultivated fields and vineyards on the slopes of Bethlehem, he kept his father"s sheep "in the wilderness" of Judah, (1Sa_17:28) and his lowly occupation
1. Was adapted to nurture physical strength, agility, and endurance; to call forth energy, self-reliance, and courage amidst numerous perils in a wild country, from beasts of prey and hill robbers; (1Ch_7:21) to make him expert in the use of the sling, like the neighbouring Benjamites (Jud_1:20:16; 1Sa_17:50; 1Ch_12:9) and to prepare him to rule over men by developing a sense of responsibility, and leading him to seek the welfare and study the increase and improvement of the flock. (Psa_78:70-72)
1. Left him much alone, and afforded him leisure for meditation and thecultivation of a taste for music, by playing on the hand harp, which he could easily carry with him when he "followed the flock," and the rare gift of song, in both of which he may have greatly improved, after his anointing, by attendance at the school of the prophets at Ramah. (1Sa_19:18) To his musical skill he owed his first introduction to the court of Saul, and by its means he became "the sweet singer of Israel." "With his whole heart he sang songs, and loved him that made him" (Ecc 47:8).
2. Furnished him with the suggestive imagery of many of his psalms, especially Psalm 23. Divine Shepherd." "It is the echo of his shepherd life, and breathes the very spirit of sunny confidence and of perfect rest in God.
III THE NATURAL CREATION. To him the visible universe was a manifestation of the glory of the invisible, immanent, ever-operating God. (Ps 104) He regarded nature "not as an independent and self-subsisting power, but rather as the outer chamber of an unseen Presence a garment, a veil, which the eternal One is ever ready to break through" (Shairp, "Poetic Inter. of Nature"). Brought into direct and constant communion with it, he felt a boundless delight in contemplating
The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills;
in listening to its mysterious voices, and watching its ever varying aspects; and poured forth the thought and feeling of his heart in songs of adoration and praise; as in Psa_19:1-13 heavens by day;" Psalm 8. heavens by night; Psalm 29. thunderstorm." "What we call the love of nature is in fact the love and admiration of the Deity (so far forth as he is perceived in external nature). The enthusiasm with which men survey the endless vicissitudes which the spectacle of the universe exhibits is nothing else than the devotional temper, moderated and repressed by the slight veil which sensible objects interpose between us and their author" (D. Stewart).
IV HISTORIC REVELATION. He was instructed in "the law of the, (Psa_19:7-14) moral law" and in the wonderful works which he had wrought on behalf of his people in past time; (Ps 105) whilst the scenes amidst which his life was spent formed a pictorial Bible, by which they were more deeply impressed on his memory. His acquaintance with the contents of the sacred records then existing would be greatly increased under the teaching of Samuel. "Thy creatures have been my books, but thy Scriptures much more" (Bacon).
V PROVIDENTIAL PRESERVATION. The same special care which had been exercised by Jehovah over Israel he was taught to recognise in the lowly course of his own individual life. Once and again he was preserved in imminent danger, (1Sa_17:37) and thus his faith in the ever watchful presence and providence of the Great Shepherd grew strong. "Every Hebrew might consider himself alone in the presence of God; the single being to whom a great revelation had been made, and over whose head an exceeding weight of glory was suspended. His personal welfare was infinitely concerned with every event that had taken place in the miraculous order of Providence His belief in him could not exist without producing, as a necessary effect, that profound impression of passionate individual attachment which in the Hebrew authors always mingles with and vivifies their faith in the Invisible" (A.H. Hallam).
VI RELIGIOUS INSPIRATION. Led by Divine grace from his earliest years into direct and loving communion with Jehovah, he was endowed with unusual spiritual power, which, as he faithfully surrendered himself to it, wrought in him more and more mightily, and prepared him for his high destiny. And all true spiritual life, as well as the peculiar endowments of the prophets and apostles, is a Divine inspiration (Joh_3:8; Act_2:17) "The morning of his day this extraordinary man spent not in colleges nor camps nor courts, but in following, the sheep among the pastures of Bethlehem. There, under the breathings of spring and the blasts of winter; there, in fellowship with fields and flocks and silent stars; there, with the spirit of nature and of God fresh upon him; there, in the land of vision, miracle, and angels there it was that his character was formed, a character which afterwards exhibited so rare a combination of simplicity and grandeur, sensibility and power" (C. Morris).
Application (to the young):
1. The morning of life is the appropriate season for education physical,mental, moral. If neglected, the evil cannot be repaired.
2. No educational advantages can be of service without your own diligentcooperation.
3. All circumstances adverse as well as propitious, solitude and society,work and recreation may be helpful to your highest progress.
4. "Have faith in God," the secret of all David"s greatness. D.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13 How long wilt thou mourn for Saul.
1Sa_16:1
How long wilt thou mourn for Saul.
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Overmuch sorrow, and its aura
In one of the visions of the prophet Ezekiel, a man with a writers inkhorn in his hand was commissioned to set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst of Jerusalem. Samuel was one who sighed and cried for the abominations which were done by Saul in his day. But sorrow, however reasonable and becoming, may be carried too far. It may be indulged until it unfits us for duty, or darkens our hope in God; it may disturb our peace and weaken our energies; it may be made an occasion of our halting, and of our neglecting public duty. The very tenderness of Samuels heart and his jealousy for God had bedimmed his faith, and kept him bewailing the case of the king. There is a lesson in this of very great practical importance. We may have lost a bosom friend or we may have witnessed a son of many prayers despising parental counsel, and rushing headlong to eternal ruin. Gods wisdom is infallible, and in its developments in Providence is always pared by His love to us. His removal of any of the objects of your affection is now beyond recall. You have duties to God, to your own soul, and to others, which cannot afford the consumption of your energies in sorrow. In the obedience of His will your griefs will be assuaged and sanctified. Samuel was summoned from his vale of tears to undertake a new commission and provide a new leader for the chosen people. A new care is to occupy the prophets mind, a new friend is to draw forth his affection, and new objects of labour and of love are to engage him. The sense of personal and relative responsibility is made by God to rebuke and cure a sorrow deemed inconsolable. Those whose spirits were burdened by heavy grief, caused by losses or by crimes, took up a pilgrims staff and made a journey to the Holy Land. It was generally believed that a pilgrimage, or a soldiership in the holy wars, was penance sufficient to expiate sin and remove the burden of a sorrowful spirit. But there is a pilgrimage and a cross-bearing eminently serviceable to heal a sorrowful spirit, and to this every mourner is personally called. How long wilt thou mourn? . . . Fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee. Yes, mourner, take your staff and go. You have rested long enough at Marah, and drank enough of its bitter water. Circumstances call upon you to journey in the service of the Lord. Your regrets and melancholy indicate need of further conformity to the Lord Jesus. Your grief will be moderated by the satisfaction of obedience to Christ.
1. There is a duty to the Lord. Like Samuel, you are in His service, and have vowed to do His will and to acquiesce in His ways. David lay upon the earth, fasted, and prayed, while affliction was upon his child; but when he learned the issue--that the child was dead--he arose from the earth. God does yet forbid tears, but He expects obedience in resignation and the discharge of duty.
2. There is a duty to your own soul. Why go I mourning? Why art thou east down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise Him, Who is the health of my countenance, and my God. The greatest cause for mourning in this world is conviction of personal guilt in the sight of God. The effect of Gods truth upon the conscience is to calf forth bitter sorrow. The convicted sinner repents and wrings his soul in sorrow, and often in tears. In the Puritan revivals of the seventeenth century this was no less characteristic of the awakening appeals of Baxter and of Flavel, of Owen and of Howe, of Rogers and of Bunyan, of Welch and of Dickson, of Rutherford and of Blair. Deep sorrow for sin marked all awakened souls in that extensive reformation of religion. At such a time many do not know what to do to obtain peace. They cry with the Jews of old, Men and brethren, what shall we do? and with the jailer, What must I do to be saved? There is oil of joy for such mourning. Relief must come from without. It is not to be got by brooding over your guilt and sorrow, but by arising and going to the Saviour.
3. There is a duty to others. Samuel had something more to live for than his own interest. He was an important member of the Hebrew commonwealth. His grief was a public calamity. The sorrow into which he was plunged might do injury. When there are others to care for, sorrow must not be immoderate. Our friends make demands upon our anxieties, and prayers, and labours. No partial affection for those who are lost can excuse neglect of those who are spared. No regret for the dead can apologise for inattention to the living. How strong an appeal is this to moderate and sanctify sorrow! Labourers for Christ! you may have to mourn over disappointed hopes and lost opportunities, and you may be ready to give way to melancholy at the retrospect of your want of success. But this mourning is ill-judged, sinful, and disastrous. Arise, fill your horn with oil and go to work again. (R. Steel.)
Mourning for the living
We generally mourn for a man when the light has gone from his eye and his form is still in death. But Saul was worth a good many dead men. He did not pass to his fathers for twenty-three years after the time these words were spoken concerning him. And yet with Saul in the very prime of manhood, God said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul? Samuel had seen with sorrow the kings lack of high purpose and endurance. He had seen the stress of life tearing the anchor from the rock. Judging by the subsequent life of the ex-king, the rejection was a deeper sorrow to Samuel than to Saul. Samuel knew that in the chosen king was that spark of goodness that needed but to be fanned to become a flame; he knew also that Saul by his own acts was extinguishing even that spark. In the life that men saw, Saul was enriched: in the life that God saw, he was impoverished. And when the inevitable judgment came--in the removal of the sceptre--Samuel mourned for Saul. Of what truths does the story of the royal castaway remind us?
I. That a man may be dead while yet alive. All around us we see men dumb to Divine questionings, deaf to human pleadings, blind to the uplifting vision, men whose Bible is the ledger, whose only church is the shop, whose one god is gold. Such men are dead while yet alive. Samuel of old mourned for the living, and the living still causes hearts to mourn. A mothers tears for her prodigal son may be more bitter than those which fall upon his coffin. A fathers anguish for his daughters sin may be more intense than the anguish born of her passing into the Unseen. The presence of the dead is physically harmful to the living, but the spiritually dead are more harmful. Physical death is inevitable, but it is not the worst thing that can befall a man. The death of the soul causes the very angels to weep.
II. That to live truly is to live triumphantly. And to be victorious in all things is one of the natural and inherent desires of the human heart. Men desire to be mighty, but the might of man must be based upon the eternal right of God. Triumph cannot be divorced from truth, for God has joined them in an indissoluble bond. There was no hope for Saul as a king, but there was hope for him as a man. The old adage, While theres life theres hope, is profoundly true. If we will but, stand still, we shall see the salvation of God. The very atmosphere in which we live and move and have our being is charged with resurrection power. Awake thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light. (F. Burnett.)
I have rejected him.
The root of national faults illustrated in the life of Saul
The character of Saul would be by itself sufficient to arrest the attention of the most heedless reader of the annals of human nature; but seen by the side of David, it is more remarkable still. The contrast between the two is strong and lucid at every point. Saul is the man of the world in every respect. He is the Roman hero, shot with the colours of the despotic East; the kind of man who ever has been the hero and demi-god of the worlds idolatry and worship, and ever will be; while David in but few particulars would obtain the admiration of mankind. There is just the difference between the two that there is between the natural and spiritual man; between him who is governed by natural religion, and him who is governed by the grace of God. But while this is the case with Saul as an individual, he resembles in a striking manner the character of nations. While he embodies the spirit of Rome, and the philosophic Greek, and bears the strong impress of the Asiatic despot he gathers up into himself the leading features of our own nation. He is very Saxon. The errors which we as a nation are constantly making, are, in all their leading features, those of the King of Israel. We are inclined nationally to embody the elements which form Sauls character, and to worship the result. We are inclined as a nation, in each circle of our society, educated and uneducated, to despise those elements which form Davids.
1. The character of Saul:--Sauls appearance was in his favour: men always are favourably impressed by personal advantages. Height, power, and beauty are ever weights thrown into the descending scale in the hand of the world. Facility is half the man.
2. He was reserved; and every man who has the power of reserve gains two steps to the one gained by him who speaks his feelings; simply because the tongue is the first instrument of hurried conviction, and the rapid speaker makes many slips. To have perception, feeling, and discernment, but to be able to hold them all in check, is one of our greatest powers. But the same force which Saul could use over his private feelings of this kind, he was also able to use over his affections. The world has ever admired this kind of trait, from Brutus downwards; but after all it may be an over-rated virtue. Saul valued religion. With no religious faith, he knew the value of religion.
5. Saul, too, was proud, intensely proud. Saul bad no vanity; but he had genuine pride.
6. Then he was generous; and generosity is ever valued by the world.
7. But the determination to recognise the externals of religion led him often into something very like dissimulation. But dissimulation in certain things is a virtue in the world; it is so with matters to do with religion.
8. But there is a second stage in Sauls Career which is highly significant. God gave up Saul, and the difference was manifest; the evil spirit occupied him at once.
9. Then came the third stage,--strikingly consistent, however paradoxical, with the others--the stage of superstition. The large-minded infidel becomes narrowed to the small compass of the superstitious, and he for whom God and His Church were not wide enough, satisfies himself with the Witch of Endor. He who found the priesthood too confined a means to attain his end, and the sacrifices too formal, bowed before an incantation, and shivered before a ghost. The only truly wide-minded man is he whose thought and soul are limited by the Word and Will of Gad. His death was worthy of him. The Roman philosopher fell upon his sword; and Saul strove to perish by suicide.
II. But Saul is best seen in contrast. The key to Sauls character is self-seeking: that unlocks each portion of his being. Davids soul was fixed on seeing God. He was absorbed in the Being in Whom he lived, died, and had his being. The world cannot appreciate this; and if the world cannot, still less the infidel.
1. Saul, I said, delighted in reserve: David expressed everything. His heart was full, and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth spake. Saul delighted to show independence of everyone, and contempt of those on whose aid he might be supposed to rely. Far otherwise with the son of Jesse. He was ever bewailing the conduct of the sons of Zeruiah, courting Abner, or pacifying Joab. He seemed to delight in showing his real dependence on all who surrounded his throne.
3. Saul calmly swore that Jonathan should die, and the entreaty of a people and a devoted army could hardly rescue him from his hands; and yet what son deserved more at a fathers hands than Jonathan? David wept for Absalom, a rebel and a hardened libertine.
4. With Saul, sacrifices, priests, and prophets were but useful unrealities, figures of a clever fiction, dramatis personae of the stage on which he happened to be acting: with David they were powerful realities.
5. Saul reserved the prey and spoil for himself, and made his own compromise with God. Davids obedience was entire; his own wail was that it was not more perfect than it was. Saul never committed himself before the people; David often did. He never strove to conceal the feeling which worked within him.
6. One feature in Sauls character I have not mentioned--his regard for aristocracy and wealth. Agag and the flocks were saved, and that at the expense of Gods Will and word. The son of Jesse found delight equally with the poor and lowly, as with the sons of kings and the hereditary princes of foreign lands.
7. Saul became the slave of Satan, and his heart the dismal scene of the operations of evil spirits; David became the man after Gods own heart.
8. Sauls soul narrowed as he advanced: the temple in which it at last worshipped was the Witchs Cave at Endor. Davids daily widened. The Temple of Jerusalem was the design of his old age; and the expansive knowledge of God and His Law is recognised in many a Psalm. Saul lived to establish and elevate self. Proud, independent, and ironical, he moved over a plane of his own. But he left no crown to his son His very descendants were extirpated. David had no such aim; he never thought of aggrandisement or of self; but his son sat on his throne, and that to many generations. And the Son of David occupies the throne of eternity. He shall reign forever and ever Lord of lords and King of kings. The two are placed in such singular juxtaposition and contrast, that they must be intended to be viewed together.
III. The striking application of the character of Saul to our own nation and race. Is there not among us an inclination to view the Church as a means rather of keeping the people in subjection, and a great and efficient instrument for education, than as having a real and intrinsic power of its own--a sacramental energy, which is there, whether we use it or no? Is there no tendency, too, besides that very superstition, when we are religious, which marks the impression of unreality as clinging to all the great external observances of Christianity?
1. We have national traits of pride, independence and reserve, which remind us of the clever king. When his election was in hand, he hid himself among the stuff, and he could not be found. It was the affectation of reserve. His contemptuous silence at the neglect of the men of Belial, and those other occasions referred to above, show the same tendency. Our reserve as a nation goes far, and shows itself in many ways. There is a lurking disposition to suppress the expression of distinctive Christianity, and to use the parlance of natural religion in preference to that of the Christian. Is it not true that that very suppression of natural impulses which society is inclined to admire and almost to deify, is after all often a cloak for a more subtle form of self-seeking and proud independence? We see the inclination to suppress natural affections from an early age. The schoolboy scarcely likes to own his mother, and is not sure whether he ought not to be ashamed of his sister. This state of things belongs especially to my own country. It is not found in the same way on the continent. The natural emotions of the heart are more recognised and honoured among other people than among ourselves. We may rate the subjugation of natural affections too highly; we may be passing by some other tendency, in whose discipline we shall gain a higher standing.
2. But there is a still more striking parallel in the case of Saul. His tendency was aristocratic and avaricious. He obeyed Gods order in invading the territory of Amalek. But he preserved the king and the sheep. The soft yet imperious call of kindred sovereignty were too much for the lowly-born monarch. For this he sacrificed his obedience to God. The tinkle of the ornaments which sounded on the camels neck of the Amalekite prince, were more attractive than the approval of the Prophet. May we here, too, find no parallel with ourselves? Though we are proud of the free access to high position offered to the lowliest born of those whose circumstances are most humble; and while a popular government guarded by the restraints of a monarchical and aristocratical influence is our often-repeated boast among the nations of the earth; still, is there not a singular inclination to covet the smile and favour of the nobly-born, and a constant recognition of the fact that we would sacrifice distinctive Christianity rather than the approval and countenance of a court? We worship respectability. Its forms peer in the background of all our professions.
3. But more, Saul saved the sheep. Money is sometimes the cry of a nation, and the amassing wealth, or standing high in a commercial reputation, frequently transcends the homage paid to God Himself.
4. But a graver evil still is suggested by Sauls character. His religious belief was broken. It rung to the touch of the world outside; but it had no substance. It was not faith. Religion and the Church were machines with him available for important State purposes, but here they stopped. The ministry of the Church may be represented as, and treated like, a foible, with no commission beyond the civil appointment. The Church herself is looked upon as a State machine, to be curtailed or amplified at no higher bidding than that of the earthly sovereign. And yet with all this the respect paid to those who occupy ecclesiastical position and office reminds us at every turn of Sauls homage to Samuel, while he laughed at the effort made by the Prophet to establish anything more than a conventional position. The day may come, and that soon, when this momentous question may sever man from man with a wrench, for which Church history in this country has scarcely a parallel. The day when men must say whether there be anything or nothing in the Holy Eucharist; whether the ministry be an order which holds its charter from heaven; and whether the Church herself, be descended by Divine appointment through successive ages, the Bride of Christ and the instrument of salvation to man; or whether she be merely the best arrangement existing to carry out the ends of the politician and the legislator. These things are either anything or nothing.
5. But the end of Saul was singular. From the dreams of unrealities and shams he betook himself to the pursuit of the figures of superstition. He forsook the boundless expanse of scepticism to pen himself up in the dark and confined cell of superstition. In pursuing the parallel we must see whether, as a nation, we may not be yielding to superstition, while we reject religion. The attendance at church on Sunday morning performed as an act of expiation for the sins of the week past, and palliation of the intended laxity of the week to come; the subscription offered to the swelling list of benefactions for this public charity or the other; the mite offered from the ample fortune to the Church to justify the alienation of the remainder of fortune to self; are really acts of superstition. Saul perished on the field of battle. It may be that by a fall from the pride of military glory nations of similar characters to the Israelitish king may have yet to learn that it is not in the bow, or in the horse, or in princes is the safe trust, but only in the Lord our God. Men tell us we must have a fall. The world at large have detected British pride. It may be magnificent, it may be successful, it may draw down admiration, or fear, or awe; it may compel homage; it may dazzle the eye of the observer, lest he detect flaws which really exist; but it must be offensive to God, it must have a fall. It is the meek who will inherit the earth. (G. Monro.)
The true and the counterfeit
as the Bible may be called Gods Picture Gallery so the Holy Spirit frequently bangs up side by side two portraits which bear much resemblance to each other, and yet have points of striking difference. I think it is plainly one of Gods great purposes to help us to discriminate between the true and the false. Judas and Peter both act basely; but one is a traitor, while Peter, with all his sin, is a genuine disciple. The same contrast, again, we observe in the ease of Demas and Luke. For, says St. Paul, Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed to Thessalonica: Only Luke is with me. One more contrast let me remind you of. In the eighth chapter of the Acts we read of Simon Magus, how he was astonished, believed, and was baptised; but he was not converted; his heart was not right in the matter; and Peter tells him, Thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity. But at the close of that chapter we have in the Ethiopian eunuch a beautiful instance of honest search after truth, and simple belief.
I. The sad story of Sauls life. I think we shall be led to observe the dramatic effect produced in the arrangement of the First Book of Samuel. As in the earliest chapters the pious childhood of Samuel is contrasted with the profligate career of the sons of Eli, so, as we dwell upon the later chapters, our minds are continually divided between admiration of Davids fortitude, charity, and holy faith; and pity for the sinful course and evident misery of the once noble king of Israel.
1. There is certainly much about Sauls early conduct which is very captivating. He was a very fine young man; taller by a head and shoulders than any of the people, and there seems to have been, at first, a very pleasing humility in him; he said nothing to his uncle of his prospects. Then he was a man of warm affections. Again, he was a man who had evidently received some religious impressions. Still I think we are warranted in saying that there was no work of grace in his soul. It is said indeed of Saul, that God gave him another heart, and that the Spirit of God came upon him; but as God never calls to a work without giving the power to perform it, this only refers to his qualifications for government.
2. Notice, next, the steps in his decline. While he was in humble life he had a humble spirit, but prosperity was too much for him: with wraith and power came spiritual decline. Oh, beware of ambition: beware how you seek great things for yourselves. You are thinking of advancement, perhaps, desiring promotion, or laying up a fortune. Look at Saul; look at Solomon; and I think you will pray, in the words of our Litany, In all time of our wealth, Good Lord, deliver us. Sauls prosperity was his ruin. David says, It is good for me that I have been afflicted: nay, I am inclined to think that even in his ease there is a beautiful simplicity of character, and steadfastness of faith, a singleness of eye, during the times of his affliction, which we often look for in vain when things went well with him. Next, we observe in Saul what is sure to come with pride and ambition, a want of faith, and an impatience, which led him to offer the sacrifice, instead of waiting for Samuel. Prosperity had been too much for him: he had begun to depart from God. When faith in the unseen is weak, and heavenly things do not occupy the soul, it almost always falls a prey to covetousness: and hence his sin on this occasion; the spoil was too tempting, and he seizes upon it like Achan.
II. Your duty towards mere professors--towards those who, while in many respects they resemble Christs disciples, are not really the people of God. It is said that one use that is being made of the metal called aluminium, is the manufacture of sovereigns so nearly resembling the current coin that it is extremely difficult, to distinguish between them. The stamp is in all respects perfect, the colour is the same, they are even of the same weight, and the application of some acids produces no results. Still there is a difference in value, and of course they will be able to discover it at the banks. Satan is very clever; he has been able to produce, in all ages of the Church, splendid hypocrites, such as have deceived some even of the elect. Still, there is a difference at heart between every child of God and every child of the devil. How shall I know a Judas from a Peter, a Demas from a Luke, a Saul from a David? Contemplate Jesus: let His perfect term continually fill your eye: walk yourself habitually with Him; and then you will not long be deceived.
1. There is a duty of separation. It became Samuels duty to separate from his friend; and we read that Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death. Are you as particular about this as you should be? You must not be too lax in your judgments. Those first six verses of Mat_7:1-29, show you that while it is not your duty to condemn, it is your duty to discriminate.
2. Yet there is one more duty which we learn from Samuels conduct towards Saul. Samuel mourned for Saul And so we have the picture of the one man going on from bad to worse, adding sin to sin; and his friend, who, from duty to God, felt constrained to keep aloof from him, still mourning over and praying for him: even as Jesus wept over Jerusalem. (C. Bosanquet, M. A.)
Vindication of the sentence on Saul
Saul was a man, an Israelite, a king, the first king of Israel; under these heads let us group our observations.
1. He was a man. Is this a great thing? Yes, very. There are so many of us that we think lightly of our kind. But what lofty dignity there is in manhood! What marvellous responsibilities cluster about it! Crowned with a kingly immortality how sublimely important is each individual! Gods claims are on that heart. Each instance of withdrawal or suspension of its homage, nay, even the independent action of its powers without reference to heavenly supremacy, is an act of disloyalty. If this earth contained but one rebel how would his loyal fellows stare at the prodigy! But no familiarity with sin can, in Gods estimate, take away its first offensiveness. How preposterously foolish to quarrel with the Great King when, in any instance, He makes the line of judicial infliction in temporal things approach the line of the sinners deservings!
2. Saul was an Israelite. As such, the claims of God, and his own responsibilities were largely increased. The will of God pressed with peculiar force on the conscience of every member of that nation. The Jew who neglected, or interfered to modify the Divine will was doubly culpable. Still further aggravated would be the offence if that will were plainly laid before the mind and emphatically pressed upon the conscience. Precisely such was the case of that offender whose conduct we are reviewing.
3. Saul was king of Israel. As such, he was vicegerent of God. Gods lieutenant and the asserter of Israels rights ought to have set himself promptly to the completion of the case against Amalek by avenging upon them the dishonour of God, and the damage done to His people. See we not here that insubmissiveness of will, that independence of aim and action which form the germ of all the evil that has intruded upon Gods holy universe. Nor is it a valid plea, palliating deviation from the strict and full performance of his commission, that it involved a dreadful sacrifice of human life. And if his heart recoiled more violently from the execution of the king than from the carnage of the whole nation, this only adds another touch to the outline of his vanity. It would be a rare triumph for him to lead about the captured king of their oldest and bitterest enemies.
4. Saul was the first king of Israel. The nation had just passed through an important crisis. The change of government was the permitted consequence of national unfaithfulness to God. His holy presence, as their immediate Ruler, was irksome to their criminal independence, and alarming to their conscience. When their king fully develops his character, he is found to be animated by the same views and feelings. Here, then, are most critical circumstances. The people have drifted far into the region of disloyalty to God and indifference to Divine things, and the change of Government which this ungodliness introduced has added new force to the current of growing degeneracy. The king has connived at disobedience. Most perilous precedent! Doubly so at the commencement of a new regime which it must help to mould. If knighthood, in its early days, be permitted with impunity to tamper thus with the behests of God, and vaunt itself in the spoils of authority reft from the majesty of heaven, what shall the end be? The case is urgent. A preventive, however terrible, must be applied. (P. Richardson.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1
CHAPTER X X I I.
DAVID ANOINTED BY SAMUEL.
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1Sa_16:1-13.
THE rejection of Saul was laid very deeply to heart by Samuel. No doubt there many engaging qualities in the man Saul, which Samuel could not but remember, and which fed the flame of personal attachment, and made the fact of his rejection hard to digest. And no doubt, too, Samuel was concerned for the peace and prosperity of the nation. He knew that a change of dynasty commonly meant civil war - it might lead to the inward weakening of a kingdom already weak enough, and its exposure to the attacks of hostile neighbours that watched with lynx eyes for any opportunity of dashing against Israel. Thus both on personal and on public grounds the rejection of Saul was a great grief to Samuel, especially as the rejection of Saul implied the rejection of Jonathan, and the prophet might ask, with no small reason, where, in all the nation, could there be found a better successor.
It was not God's pleasure to reveal to Samuel the tragic events that were to stretch Jonathan and his brothers among the dead on the same day as their father; but it was His pleasure to introduce him to the man who, at a future time, was to rule Israel according to the ideal which the prophet had vainly endeavoured to press upon Saul. There is a sharpness in God's expostulation with Samuel which implies that the prophet's grief for Saul was carried to an excessive and therefore sinful length. "How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?" Grief on account of others seems such a sacred, such a holy feeling, that we are not ready to apprehend the possibility of its acquiring the dark hue of sin. Yet if God's children abandon themselves to the wildest excess for some sorrow which bears to them the character of a fatherly chastening; if they refuse to give effect in any way to God's purpose in the matter, and to the gracious ends which He designs it to serve, they are guilty of sin, and that sin one which is greatly dishonouring to God. It can never be right to shut God out of view in connection with our sorrows, or to forget that the day is coming - impossible though it may seem - when His character shall be so vindicated in all that has happened to His children, that all tears shall be wiped from their eyes, and it shall be seen that His tender mercies have been over all His works.
It was to Bethlehem, and to the family of Jesse, that Samuel was to go to find the destined successor of Saul. The place was not so far distant from Ramah as to be quite beyond the sphere of Samuel's acquaintance. Of Jesse, one of the leading men of the place, he would probably have at least a general knowledge, though it is plain he had not any personal acquaintance with him, or knowledge of his family. Bethlehem had already acquired a marked place in Hebrew history, and Samuel could not have been ignorant of the episode of the young Moabite widow who had given such a beautiful proof of filial piety, and among whose descendants Jesse and his sons were numbered. The very name of Bethlehem was fitted to recall how God honours those that honour Him, and might have rebuked that outburst of fear which fell from Samuel, whose first thought was that he could not go, because if Saul heard of it he would kill him. Well, it is plain enough that, with all his glorious qualities as a prophet, Samuel was but a man, subject to the infirmities of men. What an honest book the Bible is! its greatest heroes coming down so often to the human level and showing the same weaknesses as ourselves! But God, who stoops to human weakness, who fortified the failing heart of Moses at the burning bush, and the doubting heart of Gideon, and afterwards the weary heart of Elijah and the trembling heart of Jeremiah, condescends in like manner to the infirmity of Samuel, and provides him with an ostensible object for his journey, which was not fitted to awaken the jealous temper of the king. Samuel is to announce that his coming to Bethlehem is for the purpose of a sacrifice, and the circumstances connected with the anointing of a successor to Saul are to be gone about so quietly and so vaguely that the great object of his visit will hardly be so much as guessed by any.
The question has often been raised, Was this diplomatic arrangement not objectionable? Was it not an act of duplicity and deceit? Undoubtedly it was an act of concealment, but it does not follow that it was an act of duplicity. It was concealment of a thing which Samuel was under no obligation to divulge. It was not concealment of which the object was to mislead anyone, or to induce any one to do what he would not have done had the whole truth been known to him. When concealment is practiced in order to take an unfair advantage of any one, or to secure an unworthy advantage over him, it is a de- testable crime. But to conceal what you are under no obligation to reveal, when some important end is to be gained, is a quite different thing. "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing;" providence is often just a vast web of concealment; the trials of Job were the fruit of Divine concealment; the answers of our Lord to the Syrophoenician woman were a concealment; the delay in going to Bethany when He heard of the illness of Lazarus was just a concealment of the glorious miracle which He intended by-and-bye to perform. One may tell the truth, and yet not the whole truth, without being guilty of any injustice or dishonesty. It was not on Saul's account at ail that Samuel was sent to anoint a king at Bethlehem. It was partly on Samuel's account and partly on David's. If David was here-after to fill the exalted office of king of Israel, it was desirable that he should be trained for its duties from his earliest years. Saul had not been called to the throne till middle life, till his character had been formed and his habits settled; the next king must be called at an earlier period of life. And though the boy's father and brothers may not understand the full nature of the distinction before him, they must be made to understand that he is called to a very special service of God, in order that they may give him up freely and readily to such preparation as that service demands. This seems to have been the chief reason of the mission of Samuel to Bethlehem. It could not but be known after that, that David was to be distinguished as a servant of God, but no idea seems to have been conveyed either to his brothers or to the elders of Bethlehem that he was going to be king.
The arrangements for the public worship of God in those times - while the ark of God was still at Kirjath-jearim - seem to have been far from regular, and it appears to have been not unusual for Samuel to visit particular places for the purpose of offering a sacrifice. It would seem that the ordinary, though not the uniform, occasion for such visits was the occurrence of something blameworthy in the community, and if so this will explain the terror of the elders of Bethlehem at the visit of Samuel, and their frightened question, "Comest thou peaceably?" Happily Samuel was able to set their fears at rest, and to assure them that the object of his visit was entirely peaceable. It was a religious service he was come to perform, such a service as may have been associated with the other religious services he was accustomed to hold as he went round in circuit in the neighbourhood of Ramah. For this sacrifice the elders of Bethlehem were called to sanctify themselves, as were also Jesse and his sons. They were to take the usual steps for freeing themselves of all ceremonial uncleanness, and after the sacrifice they were to share the feast. A considerable interval would necessarily elapse between the sacrifice and the feast, for the available portions of the animal had to be prepared for food, and roasted on the fire. It was during this interval that Samuel made acquaintance with the sons of Jesse. First came the handsome and stately Eliab. And strange it is that even with the fate of the handsome and stately Saul full in his memory, Samuel leapt to the conclusion that this was the Lord's anointed. Could he wonder at God's emphatic No I Surely he had seen enough of outward appearance coupled with inward unfitness. One trial of that criterion had been enough for Israel.
But alas, it is not merely in the choice of kings that men are apt to show their readiness to rest in the outward appearance. To what an infinite extent has this tendency been carried in the worship of God! Let everything be outwardly correct, the church beautiful, the music excellent, the sermon able, the congregation numerous and respectable - what a pattern such a church is often regarded! Alas! how little satisfactory it may be to God. The eye that searches and knows us penetrates to the heart, - it is there only that God finds the genuine elements of worship. The lowly sense of personal unworthiness, the wondering contemplation of the Divine love, the eager longing for mercy to pardon and grace to help, the faith that grasps the promises, the hope that is anchored within the veil, the kindness that breathes benediction all round, the love that beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things, - it is these things, breathing forth from the hearts of a congregation, that give pleasure to God.
Or look at what often happens in secular life. See how intensely eager some are about appearances. Why, it is one of the stereotyped rules of society that it is necessary "to keep up appearances." Well-born people may have become poor, very poor, but they must live to outward appearance as if they were rich. Between rivals there may be a deadly jealousy, but they must, by courtesy, keep up the form of friendship. And in trade a substantial appearance must be given to goods that are really worthless. And often, men who are really mean and unprincipled must pose as persons very particular about the right and very indignant at the wrong. And some, meaner than the common, must put on the cloak of religion, and establish a character for sanctity.
The world is full of idolatries, but I question if any idolatry has been more extensively practiced than the idolatry of the outward appearance. If there be less of this in our day than perhaps a generation back, it is because in these days of sifting and trial men have learned in so many ways by hard experience what a delusion it is to lean on such a broken reed. Yes, and we have had men among us who from a point of view not directly Christian have exposed the shams and counterfeits of the age, - men like Carlyle, who have sounded against them a trumpet blast which has been echoed and re-echoed round the very globe. But surely we do not need to go outside the Bible for this great lesson. "Thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part Thou shalt make me to know wisdom;" "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." Or if we pass to the New Testament, what is the great lesson of the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee? The Publican was a genuine man, an honest, humble, self-emptied sinner. The Pharisee was a silly puffed-up pretender. The world seems to think that all high profession must be hollow. I need not say that such an opinion is utterly untenable. The world would have you profess nothing, lest you should not come up to it. Christ says, "Abide in Me, so shall ye bear much fruit." It was on this principle that St. Paul professed so much and did so much. ''The life that I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
There is nothing to be said of the other sons of Jesse. Only the youngest one remained, apparently too young to be at the feast; he was in the field, keeping the sheep. "And Jesse sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance" (marg. eyes), ''and goodly to look to. And the Lord said, Arise, anoint him, for this is he." Though goodly to look at he was too young, too boyish to be preferred on the score of "outward appearance." It was qualities unseen, and as yet but little developed, that commended him. Greatly astonished must Jesse and his other sons have been to see Samuel pouring on the ruddy stripling the holy oil, and anointing him for whatever the office might be. But it has often been God's way to find His agents in unexpected places. Here a great king is found in the sheepfold. In Joseph's time a prime minister of Egypt was found in the prison. Our Lord found His chief apostle in the school of Gamaliel. The great Reformer of the sixteenth century was found in a poor miner's cottage. God is never at a loss for agents, and if the men fail that might naturally have been looked for to do Him service substitutes for them are not far to seek. Out of the very stones He can raise up children to Abraham.
But it was not a mere arbitrary arrangement that David should have been a shepherd before he was king. There were many things in the one employment that prepared the way for the other. In the East the shepherd had higher rank and a larger sphere of duties than is common with us. The duties of the shepherd, to watch over his flock, to feed and protect them, to heal the sick, bind up the broken, and bring again that which was driven away, corresponded to those which the faithful and godly ruler owed to the people committed to his sceptre. It was from the time of David that the shepherd phraseology began to be applied to rulers and their people; and we hardly carry away the full lesson that the prophets intended to teach in their denunciations of "the shepherds that fed themselves and not the flock" when we apply these exclusively to the shepherds of souls. So appropriate was the emblem of the shepherd for denoting the right spirit and character of rulers, that it was ultimately appropriated in a very high and peculiar sense to the person and office of the Lord Jesus Christ. But long ere he appeared King David had familiarized men's minds with the kind of benefits that flow from the sceptre of a shepherd-ruler - the kind of blessings that were to flow in their fullness from Christ. Never did he write a more expressive word than this, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." On the groundwork of his own earthly kingdom he had drawn the pattern of things in heavenly places, for describing which in after times no language could be found more suitable than that borrowed from his first occupation.
But in full harmony with the character of Old Testament typology, the glory of the thing symbolized was infinitely greater than the glory of the symbol. Much though the nation owed to the godly administration of him whom God ''took from the sheepfold, and brought from following the ewes great with young, to feed Jacob His people and Israel His inheritance," these benefits were shadows indeed when compared with the blessings procured by the great "Shepherd of Israel," "the good Shepherd that giveth His life for the sheep," whose shepherd care does not terminate with the life that now is, but will be exercised in eternity in feeding them and leading them by living fountains of water, where God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.
There are other points of typical resemblance between David and Christ that demand our notice here. If it was a strange-like thing for God to find the model king of Israel in a sheepcot at Bethlehem, it was still more so to find the Saviour of the world in a workshop at Nazareth. But again; King David was chosen for qualities that did not fall in with the ordinary conception of what was king-like, but qualities that commended him to God; and in the same manner the Lord Jesus Christ, God's Elect, in whom His soul delighted, was not marked by those attributes which men might have considered suitable in one who was to gain the empire of the world. "He shall grow up as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground; He hath no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see Him there is no beauty that we should desire Him." In bodily form the Lord Jesus would seem to have resembled David rather than Saul. There is no reason to think that there was any great physical superiority in Christ, that He was taller than the common, or that He was distinguished by any of those physical features that at first sight captivate men. And even in the region of intellectual and spiritual influence, our Lord did not conform to the type that naturally commands the confidence and admiration of the world. He had a still, quiet manner. His eloquence did not flash, nor blaze, nor flow like a torrent. The power of His words was due more to their wonderful depth of meaning, going straight to the heart of things, and to the aptness of His homely illustrations. Our Lord's mode of conquest was very remarkable. He conquered by gentleness, by forbearance, by love, by sympathy, by self-denial. He impressed men with the glory of sacrifice, the glory of service, the glory of obedience, obedience to the one great authority - the will of God - to which all obedience is due. He inspired them with a love of purity, - purity of heart, purity after the highest pattern. If you compare our blessed Lord with those who have achieved great conquests, you cannot but see the difference. I do not mean with conquerors like Alexander, or Caesar, or Napoleon. Napoleon himself at St. Helena showed in a word the vast difference between Christ and them. ''Our conquests," said he, "have been achieved by force, but Jesus achieved His by love, and to-day millions would die for Him." But look at some who have conquered by gentler means. Take such men as Socrates, or Plato, or Aristotle. They achieved great intellectual conquests - they founded intellectual empires. But the intellect of Jesus Christ was of another order from theirs. He propounded no theory of the universe. He did not affect to explain the world of reason. He did not profess to lay bare the laws of the human mind, or prescribe conditions for the welfare of states. What strikes us about Christ's method of influence is its quiet homeliness. Yet quiet and homely though it was and is, how prodigious, how unprecedented has been its power! What other king of men has wielded a tithe of His influence? And that not with one class of society, but with all, not only with the poor and uneducated, but with thinkers and men of genius as well; not only with men and women who know the world, and know their own hearts and all their wants, and apprehend the fitness of Christ to supply them, but even with little children, in the simple unconsciousness of opening years. For out of the mouths of babes and sucklings He hath perfected praise.
Now let us mark this also, in conclusion, that besides being a King Himself Jesus makes all His people kings to God. Every Christian is designed to be a ruler, an unconscious one it may be, but one who exercises an influence in the same direction as Christ's. How can you accomplish this? By first of all drinking into Christ's spirit, looking out on the world as He did, with compassion, sympathy, self-sacrifice, and an ardent desire for its renovation and its happiness. By walking "worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called." Not by the earthquake, or by the tempest, but by the still small voice. By quiet, steady, persistent love, goodness, and self-denial. These are the true Christian weapons, often little thought of, but really the armour of God, and weapons mighty to the pulling down of strongholds and the subjugation of the world to Christ.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 13 1Sa_16:1. “How long wilt thou mourn,” etc. “These words…
CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES—
1Sa_16:1. “How long wilt thou mourn,” etc. “These words show that the prophet had not yet been able to reconcile himself to the hidden ways of the Lord; that he was still afraid that the people and kingdom of God would suffer from the rejection of Saul, and that he continued to mourn for Saul, not merely from his own personal attachment to the fallen king, but also, and perhaps still more, from anxiety for the welfare of Israel.” (Keil). “Thine horn.” “A different word from the vial spoken of at 1Sa_10:1” (Biblical Commentary.) “Horns were anciently used for holding liquors, which were sometimes drunk out of them. They were hung up on the walls of rooms or the poles of tents” (Jamieson.) “Jesse the Bethlehemite.” “The genealogy of Jesse is traced to Boaz (Rth_4:18-21). But the object was merely to prove that he was a link in the Messianic chain of descent, and it is left quite unknown whether Jesse was the eldest of Obed and Boaz’s family, or a younger son.” (Jamieson.) “I have provided.” “The language is remarkable and seems to imply a difference between this and the former king. Saul was the people’s choice, … the next was to be of God’s nomination.” (Jamieson.)
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1Sa_16:2. “How can I go,” etc. “The sacred historian does not conceal the fact that Samuel was afraid … here is an evidence of veracity.” (Wordsworth.) “This fear on the part of the prophet, who did not generally show himself either hesitating or timid, can only be explained, as we may see from 1Sa_16:14, on the supposition that Saul was already given up to the power of the evil spirit, so that the very worst might be dreaded from his madness if he discovered that Samuel had anointed another king. That there was some foundation for Samuel’s anxiety, we may infer from the fact that the Lord did not blame him for his fear, but pointed out the way by which he might anoint David without attracting attention.” (Keil.) Say, I am come to sacrifice,” etc. “There is here an appearance of duplicity sanctioned by Divine authority which it is important for us to examine. It was the purpose of God that David should be anointed at this time as Saul’s successor, and as the ancestor and type of His Christ. It was not the purpose of God that Samuel should stir up a civil war by setting up David as Saul’s rival. Secrecy, therefore, was a necessary part of the transaction. But secrecy and concealment are not the same as duplicity and falsehood. Concealment of a good purpose for a good purpose is clearly justifiable, e.g. in war, in medical treatment, in State policy, and in the ordinary affairs of life. In the providential government of the world, and in God’s dealings with individuals, concealment of His purpose till the proper time for its development is the rule rather than the exception, and must be so.” (Biblical Commentary.)
1Sa_16:4. “The elders trembled,” etc. “The anxious inquiry of the elders presupposes that even in the time of Saul the prophet Samuel was frequently in the habit of coming unexpectedly to one place and another, for the purpose of reproving and punishing wrong-doing and sin.” (Keil.) “They might have been conscious of secret guilt, and supposed that Samuel coming among them as the judicial vicegerent of God, was about to investigate and punish the commission of some crime. The inhabitants of this place have long been proverbial for their refractory spirit; for even in modern times they have been often at variance with the reigning power.” (Hardy’s Notices of the Holy Land.)
1Sa_16:5. “I am come to sacrifice unto the Lord.” “It is evident from this that the prophet was accustomed to turn his visits to account by offering sacrifices, and so building up the people in fellowship with the Lord.” (Keil.) “Sanctify yourselves.” By the preparation prescribed in Exo_19:14-15. “He sanctified Jesse,” etc., i.e., he took care that they were sanctified.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—1Sa_16:1-5
SAMUEL’S VISIT TO BETHLEHEM
I. God helps man to a better condition by the instrumentality of man. Those parts of the earth that are by nature useless to man, may by cultivation be made to minister to his comfort. Weeds and unfruitful trees may be uprooted, and trees yielding fruit and herbs for the service of man may take their place. But man himself must work the change. If the desert is to rejoice and blossom as the rose, human instrumentality must exert itself. And so is it in matters relating to man’s spiritual and moral well-being. If a moral wilderness is to be transformed into a garden of the Lord, God uses men, or a man, to do the work. Israel was now suffering from the misrule of a king who would not be ruled by God, and God purposed to bring about a change, to inaugurate a new and brighter era for the people, both materially and spiritually. And He chose a man to indicate His rejection of the king who had brought no blessing to the nation, and to point out him who was to lift it to a higher condition of prosperity both morally and commercially. Samuel, in the hand of God, was the man who uprooted the fruitless tree and planted in its place one which was to bear fruit for Israel’s sustenance and growth. So the higher and more blessed rule of the gospel dispensation was proclaimed to humanity by man. The state of man by nature is a state of moral misrule—of spiritual unfruitfulness; and to man was entrusted the work of proclaiming to the world deliverance from the dominion of the powers of darkness and the advent of a new King of men, under whose beneficent rule first the wilderness of individual hearts, and then by degrees all the moral wastes upon the face of the earth shall break forth into spiritual fruitfulness and beauty. When Our Lord commissioned His Apostles to “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mar_16:15), He commanded them to proclaim the accession of a new Sovereign, under whose government all the subjects of all the kingdoms of the world might, if they were willing, be lifted into the glorious liberty of the children of God. He has ordained that by human lips this new era shall be made known to man—that by human instrumentality men shall learn who it is that is God’s Anointed One.
II. Those who are instruments of good to man sometimes shrink from the work which God calls them to do. And Samuel said, “How can I go?” God’s methods of making His children instruments of good to others are often most perplexing and painful to them, and tasks are given them to perform from which they draw back in fear and trembling. Joseph was made an instrument of great blessing both to the nation of Egypt and to his own family, but the way in which he became such a benefactor was a very rough one, and if he could have seen it lying before him without seeing the goal to which it would bring him, he would probably have asked Samuel’s question, “How can I go?” When Moses was called by God to go and stand before Pharaoh, he drew back from the mission with which God charged him with such persistency that “the anger of the Lord was kindled against him” (Exo_4:13), although in his case the reluctance apparently arose rather from a sense of his own inability than from fear of evil to his own person. Yet in his case as in that of Samuel the cause of the shrinking back was the same, viz., a momentary failure of that full confidence in God which was an eminent feature in the characters of both these good men. The hesitation in both was but a transient cloud which only dimmed for a very short season the almost perfect obedience which each of them rendered to their God. It sufficed to show that both were men of like passions and infirmities with ourselves, and links them with God’s honoured servants in all ages, all of whom have their hours of faithlessness and consequently of fear.
III. The true servants of God in such circumstances tell out their perplexity and fear to God Himself. This is a certain cure for attacks of cowardice arising from mistrust of God’s power and wisdom. When Jonah was entrusted with a distasteful and perilous task there is no record that he made known to God his weakness and fear. He took counsel with no one but himself, and the result was ignominious defeat. But neither Moses nor Samuel seek, like the son of Amittai, to “flee from the presence of the Lord” (Jon_1:3), but to the Lord Himself they make known their fears and their reasons for wavering. And the result in both cases is the same—their faith rises to the emergency, and in the protection and help afforded to them in performing the duty enjoined upon them they have a fresh proof that God never sends His servants to “warfare at their own charges.”
IV. Those who are instruments of good to their fellow-creatures are often regarded by them with distrust and suspicion. No man in the land of Israel could have had any reason to regard Samuel in any other light than in that of a true friend, yet the elders of the town meet him with the question, “Comest thou peaceably?” A consciousness of guilt is often at the bottom of this distrust and dislike. The entrance of a faithful man of God into some circles or localities is unwelcome because his very presence arouses in the ungodly a sense of their guilt. The feeling may not be very clearly defined even to themselves, but it is the cause which makes them dislike the company of such a man. The officer of justice, whether he be clothed in a policeman’s uniform or a judge’s ermine, is regarded by an innocent man as a “minister of God for good” (Rom_13:4). But the guilty man does not feel at rest in his presence. Samuel was a man of God whose very presence was enough to arouse in guilty men a sense of their deserts, and he was also a judge in Israel whose visit to Bethlehem might have been regarded with fear by the villagers, because they knew that they had been guilty of outward acts of disobedience to the law of God. Or their distrustful reception of Samuel might have arisen from a suspicion that he was to be the instrument of a change of rule in Israel. Men are often so little alive to their true interests, and so averse to any change, that they resent any disturbance in the existing order of things, even although it would bring much blessing to themselves. The Bethlehemites might have been certain that any change which came to them from God through Samuel would be for good, and not for evil, and yet fear of Saul and an unwillingness to be disturbed might have made them prefer the rule of their present unworthy monarch to a new order of government. A fear of immediate unpleasant consequences and a cowardly and unworthy content with things as they are has often made men regard with suspicion and with positive hatred those who have desired to bring them under a better rule—those who have endeavoured to free them individually from the tyranny of Satan, or, nationally from bondage to Satan’s emissaries. The reformers of all ages, both in the Church and in the State, have been coldly welcomed by the majority of those to whom God has made them instruments of blessing. But this need not be a matter of either surprise or discouragement when we remember that those whom the Son of God came to make “free indeed” (Joh_8:36) cried, “Crucify Him! crucify Him!” and that His great apostle whose heart’s desire and prayer was for the salvation of his fellow-countrymen (Rom_10:1) received from them this sentence, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that He should live” (Act_22:22).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
1Sa_16:1. It is an unnatural senselessness not to be affected with the dangers, with the sins, of our governors. God did not blame this sorrow, but moderated it. It was not the affection He forbade but the measure. In this is the difference betwixt good men and evil; that evil men mourn not for their own sins, good men do so mourn for the sins of others that they will hardly be taken off. If Samuel mourn because Saul hath cast away God by his sin, he must cease to mourn because God hath cast away Saul from reigning over Israel in His just punishment. A good heart hath learned to rest itself upon the justice of God’s decree, and forgets all earthly respects when it looks up to heaven.—Bp. Hall.
The affairs of the kingdom of God go their way without break or halt according to God’s high thoughts and decrees, though human sin and its attendant judgment (as in Saul’s case), or human weakness (as in Samuel’s inordinate grief for Saul), may seem to hinder the plans of the Divine wisdom. But it is also precisely by human sin and foolishness that the history of God’s kingdom under the guidance of the Divine wisdom and providence receives new occasions and impulses to wider and higher development according to the aims which God sets before Himself.—Lange’s Commentary.
God demands in the souls He sets apart for Himself and for the guidance of others, such a dying to all things that He does not allow them to regard any other interest than His, whatever reason may be alleged.—Berlenberger Bible.
Remedies for improper mourning.
1. Submission to the will of God (“I have rejected him”).
2. Diligence in present work for God (“Fill thy horn and go”).
3. Hope that God will bring a better future (“I have provided me a king”)—Translator of Lange’s Commentary.
In the providence of God, there is a blessed arrangement by which the new duties and cares which are occasioned by bereavements, losses, or disappointments become the means of alleviating distress and improving the soul.… Persons in public positions are summoned from their humiliation and melancholy, induced by the defeat of favourite schemes, to endeavour to retrieve their influence, and do some good before they die. The sense of personal and relative responsibility is thus made by God to rebuke and cure a sorrow deemed inconsolable.…
1. There is a duty to the Lord.… It would not be reverent to quarrel with His providence: it would be disobedient and impious …
2. There is a duty to your own soul. “Fill thine horn with oil,” and go to the new duties to which you are called, that it may be well with yourself.
3. There is a duty to others. Samuel had something more to live for than his own interest. His grief was a public calamity. The sorrow into which he was plunged might do injury.… When there are others to care for, our grief must not be immoderate.—Steel.
1Sa_16:2. Perhaps desire of full direction drew from him this question, but not without a mixture of diffidence; for the manner of doing it doth not so much trouble him as the success. It is not to be expected that the most faithful hearts should be always in an equal height of resolution: God does not chide Samuel, but instruct him.—Bishop Hall.
1Sa_16:4. Hundreds of years after this, when the heavenly light was seen in the same place by the shepherds, they too were “sore afraid;” but there was as little to fear in the one case as in the other; for in both there was a provided sacrifice, and in both the mission was one of peace; yea, as Samuel came to anoint David to be a king, so the angel-heralded Jesus appeared “to make us kings and priests unto our Lord and His Father.”—Dr. W. M. Taylor.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 1Sa 16:1
1Sa 16:1
Consider:—
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I. The reason of Saul’s rejection from the throne of Israel. Saul’s failure may be traced to three things. (1) He was a disobedient king. (2) He was an untruthful king. (3) He was a hypocritical king.
II. The manner of David’s appointment to the throne of Israel. The want of the age was a truly devout man, with a strong hand and a brave heart. Three things in this undertaking of Samuel’s claim attention. (1) It was a dangerous mission. (2) It was a responsible mission. (3) It was a successful mission.
III. The declaration of David’s fitness for the throne of Israel. "I have provided Me a king among his sons." The secret of David’s success is explained by three things. (1) There was a Divine choice. (2) There was a Divine preparation. (3) There was a Divine calling. God makes the choice, qualifies the man, and appoints the office.
Parker, City Temple, vol. i., p. 23.
References: 1Sa 16:1.—F. M. Krummacher, David the King of Israel, p. 1; R. Lorimer, Bible Studies in Life and Truth, p. 93. 1Sa 16:1-13.—W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel, p. 1; Sunday Magazine, 1886, p. 28.
1Sa 16:7
I. God’s knowledge of human nature, according to the passage before us, is immediate and direct.
II. Being immediate and direct, God’s knowledge of man is perfect.
III. Because God’s knowledge is direct and perfect, it surpasses men’s knowledge of each other and of themselves.
Consider: IV. The life-lessons yielded by the text. (1) The folly of permitted self-delusion. (2) The utter uselessness of all hypocrisy. (3) The exposed position of all our sins. (4) The duty of being passive under Divine discipline. (5) The reasonableness of our acting on God’s judgment of men. (6) A motive to diligence in keeping the heart.
S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Pulpit, 5th series, No. xxiii.
There is something in the character of Eliab which makes him unfit for the office of king. Eliab seems to have become a great man afterwards. We read of him as a prince of the tribe of Judah, and of his daughter or his granddaughter as the queen of Rehoboam. But, though the eldest son of the house and of the tribe, there was wanting in him the especial spirit of David; he showed, though in less degree, the fault of Saul, and the very next thing we find him doing is exhibiting the contrary character to Samuel’s and David’s, and saying and doing exactly what Saul might have done. It is an instance of envy, of harsh, uncharitable judgment. When David came down with a message from his father, Eliab, utterly misunderstanding the case, caring nothing to know the rights of it, heedless of justice or of feeling, forgets that the boy has been sent by his father, sent for his good and sent at a risk, and he shows penetration, as he thinks, in accusing David of coming down merely to see the battle. How prone we all are to ascribe our neighbour’s act to self-seeking and self-conceit and self-indulgence, while for our own faults we find excuses, justifications, easy assertions. There are pleasures greater than triumphs, clearer insight than worldly penetration. Let us rejoice over each other’s good and discern each other’s goodness, because "charity envieth not, seeketh not her own, thinketh no evil."
Archbishop Benson, Boy Life: Sundays in Wellington College, p. 74.
Consider the necessity we lie under, if we would be Christians indeed, of drawing our religious notions and views, not from what we see, but from what we do not see and only hear, or rather the great mistake under which men of the world lie of judging religious subjects merely by what the experience of life tells them. We must believe something; the difference between religious men and others is, that the latter trust this world, the former the world unseen. Both of them have faith, but the one have faith in the surface of things, the other in the word of God.
I. We see this truth in a doctrine much debated, much resisted, at this day—the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. Here we find that experience is counter to the word of God, which says that except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he is no member of Christ’s kingdom. We have here a trial of faith—the faith which alone overcomes the world.
II. Another trial of faith is the success which attends measures or institutions which are not in accordance with the revealed rule of duty. In every age and at all times, the Church seems to be failing and its enemies to be prevailing.
III. Another instance in which experience and faith are opposed to each other is to be found in the case of those who deny the doctrine of the Trinity, or the Incarnation, or the Atonement, or original sin.
IV. A fourth instance is the difficulty of believing the words of Scripture that the impenitent shall go into fire everlasting. We feel it a hard saying that even the most wicked should be destined to eternal punishment. But we must accept the truth, as an act of faith towards God and as a solemn warning to ourselves.
J. H. Newman, Sermons on Subjects of the Day, p. 63.
References: 1Sa 16:7.—Parker, vol. vii., p. 71; A. F. Reid, Dundee Pulpit, 1872, p. 92; Bailey, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 53; J. Van Oosterzee, Year of Salvation, vol. ii., p. 427; S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 84. 1Sa 16:11.—Outline Sermons for Children, p. 39; T. Coster, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xix., p. 150; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. viii., p. 345. 1Sa 16:11, 1Sa 16:12.—J. Vaughan, Sermons to Children, 5th series, p. 1.
1Sa 16:13
David was not only the topmost man of his century, but also the climax of the best life of the chosen people of God, the consummate flower of the religion of Moses in its best days. He was a man of striking mental and moral opulence; rich in gifts and richer in achievements; a poet and a politician; a chief of brigands and a champion of the armies of God; a vassal of the Philistines and the creator of the Hebrew fatherland; simple as a child in his hunger for love, in beautiful humility, and in frank self-avowal, but prudent, cautious, and self-controlled in the thick onset of danger; tender-hearted, even to folly, as a father, but wise, sagacious, and powerful as a ruler of men, as is proved by his knitting together the scattered tribes of Israel into an invincible unity. What then is the full tale of this man’s upbuilding?
I. Remember: (1) Man is a spirit. (2) "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." Spirit builds spirit; soul makes soul. The Hebrew historian accounts for David—for all he was and all he did—by the simple and comprehensive statement, "The Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward."
Whatever David is that is spiritual and Godlike is due to that benignant advent, and whatever he accomplishes that advances the well-being of Israel results from that invisible presence.
II. Why is it that David, of all the sons of Jesse and of all the children of Israel, is elected by the prophet for this special consecration to kingly place and power? The answer is that God sees in that lad the Tightness of heart which is the only basis for the building up of a true character, the manifest "set" of the inward life in its faith and hope, its yearning and passion, towards God and goodness, which is before all things the qualification for a redeeming and renewing career amongst men. Evermore God’s unseen educating ministry goes forward. He is always preparing the world’s kings. True rulers are never absent. When the clock of time strikes, and their hour is come, they take their place and do their work, and we are debtors all.
III. Nothing more eradicably rooted itself in David’s mind or found more pathetic expression in his songs than the immense educational influence of his family and shepherd life. That influence was the salt of his career. It brought him face to face with reality, and developed an inwardness of being that brought peace and power for evermore.
J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, p. 163.
References: 1Sa 16:13.—Bishop Walsham How, Plain Words to Children, p. 68; J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College, vol. ii., p. 39.
1Sa 16:14
Saul, self-willed and capricious, had shown himself unfit for his position, so the Spirit of God was taken from him, and an evil spirit from the Lord terrified or troubled him.
Notice:—
I. Men must either have the Spirit of God or an evil spirit. (1) God loves to dwell in the human heart. That is His chosen temple. The sky is vast, and its canopy is thick with worlds, but that is not the temple that God seeks. The earth is beautiful and sublime, but God does not choose that temple. Man rears lofty piles, but God’s chosen temple is not there. His temple is in the lowly heart, in the bosom of the meanest of the sons of men who cries out for God. (2) But if man will not have God, he cannot shut the door of his heart against other visitors. Spirit cannot isolate itself from spirit, any more than matter can from matter. But the spirit can decide whether it will ally itself with the good or the evil. If God is not received, evil spirits enter, being invited by the sympathies and affinities of the soul. Man is like a house situated between two winds. Every one must decide to which side he is going to open. Both doors cannot be shut. You can only get the dismal, fatal door shut by opening wide the door that looks to the sea of eternity and the sunshine of God. The wind blowing in through this open door keeps the door of ruin shut.
II. The stress of inward temptation and trouble is often peculiarly fitted and evidently intended to drive men to God.
Of temptations and troubles which have this adaptation in a marked degree may be mentioned first: (1) Melancholy. Saul’s was a very conspicuous and overmastering melancholy. Melancholy is essentially the feeling of loneliness, the sense of isolation, of having a great burden of existence to bear. It is the soul’s fear, and shrinking, and chill in the vast solitude of its house. It has driven many souls to God. (2) A feeling of the vanity of existence is another great temptation and trouble. This is the cause of much feebleness of purpose, and want of principle, and bitterness, and cynicism. There is no remedy for it but in faith in God and an eternal future. (3) The mystery of life weighs on others—what Wordsworth calls "the weight and mystery of all this unintelligible world." When the night of mystery comes down and closes round us, let us press close to Christ. (4) The gloom and desolation of doubt and unbelief constrain men to turn to God. (5) Fierce temptations to evil drive many souls to God.
J. Leckie, Sermons Preached at Ibrox, p. 244 (see also Contemporary Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 25).
References: 1Sa 16:14.—Phillips Brooks, Twenty Sermons, p. 297; F. W. Hook, Parish Sermons, p. 44; I. Williams, Characters of the Old Testament, p. 171; R. D. B. Rawnsley, A Course of Sermons for the Christian Year, p. 281. 1Sa 16:14-23.—W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel, p. 13.
1Sa 16:18
In this passage we meet with David when he was still but a young man, and there are five distinct things mentioned about him which we may find it useful to consider.
I. Notice first his person, his pleasing and attractive presence or address. He had an admirable physique, had his head screwed on the right way, and was of immense strength and agility. The prominent feature about him was his manliness. There was nothing little about him. As we read the story of his life we smell the breath of the new-mown hay, and hear the bleatings on the Bethlehem hills.
II. His pastime. David’s favourite pastime was music. He consecrated that great gift of his to the highest ends, and found music to be most enjoyable when linked with sacred themes. We should learn from him, not only to cultivate our faculties, but to employ them in the service and for the glory of God.
III. His patriotism. David’s courage and chivalry were not confined to camps and battlefields, but characterised his whole life. No mere ambitious self-seeker was David; he was as genuine a patriot as ever lived. A healthy and unselfish public spirit needs to be cultivated. The first and most obvious duty which a man owes to the commonwealth is to see that he is no burden to it. It is in vigilant industry and sound common-sense, employed about a man’s daily calling, that he makes his first contribution to the nation’s wealth and weal.
IV. His prudence. The text describes him as "prudent in matters"—i.e., a young man of sound judgment and of sterling common-sense. Even as a mere lad he showed singular judgment. Many a youth would have fairly lost his head when taken from the sheepfolds to the palace. David did not. Three times over it is declared of him that "he behaved himself wisely."
V. His piety. "And the Lord was with him." This was his noblest recommendation; he carried God with him into all the minutest details of life. He was "a man after God’s own heart." Learn from his life to decide what the principles of your life are to be, and stand by them at any cost.
J. Thain Davidson, The City Youth, p. 19.
David displays in his personal character that very temper of mind in which his nation, or rather human nature itself, is especially deficient. Pride and unbelief disgrace the history of the chosen people, the deliberate love of this world which was the sin of Balaam, and the presumptuous wilfulness which was exhibited in Saul. But David is conspicuous for an affectionate, a thankful, a loyal, heart towards his God and Defender, a zeal which was as fervent and as docile as Saul’s was sullen, and as keen-sighted and pure as Balaam’s was selfish and double-minded.
I. Consider what was, as far as we can understand, David’s especial grace, as faith was Abraham’s distinguishing virtue, meekness the excellence of Moses, self-mastery the gift especially conspicuous in Joseph. From the account of David’s office in Psa 78:70-72, it is obvious that his very first duty was that of fidelity to Almighty God in the trust committed to him. Saul had neglected his Master’s honour, but David, in this an eminent type of Christ, "came to do God’s will." As a viceroy in Israel, and as being tried and found faithful, he is especially called "a man after God’s own heart" David’s peculiar excellence is that of fidelity to the trust committed to him.
II. Surely the blessings of the patriarchs descended in a united flood upon "the lion of the tribe of Judah," the type of the true Redeemer who was to come. He inherits the prompt faith and magnanimity of Abraham; he is simple as Isaac; he is humble as Jacob; he has the youthful wisdom and self-possession, the tenderness, the affectionateness, and the firmness of Joseph. And as his own especial gift, he has an overflowing thankfulness, a heroic bearing in all circumstances, such as the multitude of men see to be great, but cannot understand.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. iii., p. 44.
References: 1Sa 16:23.—F. W. Krummacher, David the King of Israel, p. 20; T. Coster, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xix., p. 166 S. Cox, The Bird’s Nest, p. 99.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 Subdivision 1. (1Sa 16:1-23; 1Sa 17:1-58; 1Sa 18:1-30; 1Sa…
Subdivision 1. (1Sa 16:1-23; 1Sa 17:1-58; 1Sa 18:1-30; 1Sa 19:1-24; 1Sa 20:1-42; 1Sa 21:1-15; 1Sa 22:1-23; 1Sa 23:1-29; 1Sa 24:1-22; 1Sa 25:1-44; 1Sa 26:1-25; 1Sa 27:1-12; 1Sa 28:1-25; 1Sa 29:1-11; 1Sa 30:1-31; 1Sa 31:1-13.)
The obedience of the destined king.
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For the king after God’s heart suffering must precede glory. He must obey before he can rule; and, like his Antitype, learn obedience by the things that he suffers. But the need and manner of learning are as different as the persons are different. Here we must look beyond David to learn what David’s history means.
In Christ there could be no need of the discipline of suffering. Trial did not perfect Him in obedience, but showed Him perfect. Yet "perfected through suffering" He was, but as the "Captain of salvation," the "Author and finisher of faith," the One who goes before on and initiates the path upon which He victoriously leads His followers.* For this in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren, "tempted in all things, like as we are, sin apart." (Heb 4:15, Gk.) How wondrous, how inspiring, such an example! God Himself become man to lead our feet in obedience on the path His own have trodden! In the peculiar sufferings of the cross He has gone beyond us, where none could follow; in all else we are called to enter into the "fellowship of His sufferings," and that as the way to share with Him, through His grace, the crown also: it is "if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him." (2Ti 2:12.)
{*Arkegos is the word for "Captain" and "Author" both. -(Heb 2:10; Heb 12:2.)}
The sufferings of David take up many chapters of the record here, -sufferings which exalt him in our thoughts much more than his after glories. We need, as knowing the deeper reality of which they speak, to search into them with special earnestness, and prayerfulness of spirit, and with the precious assurance that it is of Christ that the spirit of prophecy speaks through him: expecting ourselves, therefore, to find shining through the type the true David, God’s "Beloved." The veil for us has been here, as elsewhere, really taken away: may there be not a remnant even of darkening veil over our hearts!
1. The first thing that we are called to see in David is his unique sufficiency for the hour of Israel’s need. In the valley of Elah, even Jonathan, the hero of Michmash, has no help. All Israel are alike trembling and helpless in the presence of the Philistine champion, and David becomes indeed the captain of their salvation. The meaning of this we shall look at presently. Before it we are called to see him as the elect of God, qualified of the Spirit of God for the work before him. For it is never man simply that can accomplish anything: the creature was not meant to live apart from the Creator; man apart is man fallen, and in the ruin of that fall; his glory is to be nigh God, with God, and thus Christ is the only full and adequate thought of him as in the mind of God from the beginning; not an after-thought, but that to which creation from the beginning pointed.
(1) If we have David before us, we shall not even mourn for Saul. This is what is contained in Jehovah’s reproof of Samuel. It is not, of course, that he was wrong in manifesting such sorrow as the Lord Himself had over Jerusalem. It can never be aught but fellowship with Him, to weep the Redeemer’s tears over human obduracy and its inevitable results. But put a Saul at his best outwardly, -and his best was but outward, -who could weep to see him displaced by a David on the throne of Israel? And much more when, as to man in general, we would lament for the crown of creation fallen from his head, -how can we do this when we see Christ assume it?
Samuel is bidden then to fill his horn with oil and go to Bethlehem, and anoint there one of the sons of Jesse to be king. The horn is the familiar type of power, as oil is of the Spirit: it is from Him who has power that the anointing comes, from Him who will make good all that it implies, and whose king must be not simply naturally but spiritually qualified, -with whom power will be, therefore, power with God, that is, spiritual power. Bethlehem we know well as the "house of bread"; and its connection with Him who is the "living bread" makes very plain its meaning. How plainly, also, for Israel was David to be the minister of sustenance for faith, as well as for God’s people at all times! Christ’s power for us has been manifested in more precise ministry. From the Father’s house, the true "house of bread," He came, to open the stores of it, and meet earth’s famine with the bounty of God. Thus Jesse the Bethlehemite witnesses in his name that "Jehovah exists." Man has sunk down low enough; hope in him rightfully there is none: the more completely that is cut off; the more surely we come to the Omnipotent and self-sufficing God, ever living, and out of whom all that is lost may be restored.
Samuel fears this errand; for Saul’s character is but too well known. He is told, therefore, to take a heifer and go and sacrifice, and call Jesse to the sacrifice. Nor are we to look at this as merely a protecting veil thrown mercifully around the weakness of His servant. We have already seen such a sacrificial feast spread in connection with Saul’s anointing, and know it as the sign of peace and communion between God and man. This is where Saul had failed so utterly. For him, too, all had been prepared, and he was an invited guest; but into the reality of this he had never entered. David therefore was to be now the guest, and to make up for Saul’s deficiency. And the true King, when He comes, is more than David; for He is not only partaker of but spreads the feast.
Samuel goes, therefore, to Bethlehem, but the elders tremble at his coming. Things are out of course in Israel, and an uneasy conscience finds in the approach of one who walks with God a cause of distress. But Samuel quiets this, and calls them to the sacrifice, for which also he sanctifies Jesse and his sons.
They seem alone to have been present at the sacrificial meal that follows, when David is anointed. As the prophet sees the stately and striking form of Eliab, the eldest son, he imagines for the moment that this must be the one intended of the Lord; but Jehovah rebukes the thought. "Man looketh on the eyes," -the deepest well of thought and feeling to him, -"but Jehovah looketh on the heart." Abinadab next comes before him, and then Shammah, and so seven of Jesse’s sons, but all to be rejected; and there is only one remaining, away with the sheep. When he is brought, at once the voice of the Lord is heard by the prophet, Arise, anoint him"; and David is anointed in the presence of all his brethren.
Can we gain anything from this, save that the Lord sees deeper than man, and that he chooses often for His instruments those little among men? That is true, and also important, for we are prone to forget it: but is that all that we are to learn from these details given? If not, shall we be over-bold in seeking to find meanings somewhat deeper than the surface? For here is a great type surely, and a question raised, which, if we think a little, we shall find occupies men today: Who is God’s coming King of men? And what principle does He stand for or represent? Or what is the message that He brings with Him when He comes? If it is said, perhaps, It is a principle, and not a person, that men are expecting, even so it will be found that principles also wait for introduction by a person, who identifies himself with these, and is identified with them; and that men think this a valid and important subject of inquiry still. It should not be strange, then, if God have a Person in His mind who is to bring in the reign of truth and righteousness and peace which still men look for, though it be so long delayed; and that He is identified with principles of infinite importance, of which God’s heart is full, -so full that it has been overflowing to communicate them, before there were ears open even to receive the report, or the time had come in which it could be fairly uttered.
Saul is yet upon the scene, and potent in his way too, we see, but doomed to be set aside. The man of the people has failed utterly under the test of God.
His principle has been independence of God, reason such as he deems it unimpeded by revelation, the pursuit of his own ends by his own means, since God plainly cannot be trusted to secure these. Alas, all this is easily understood and confidently acted on all the world over, and will be, surely, (for at least there is no sign of change,) as long as human nature is what it is, or God does not come in to change by divine power the course of things.
Kings have failed, so that it is the glory of the present age to have either superseded or taken in hand to fetter them. Aristocracy fails, for it is only a diluted and more moderate kingship, many-headed and less easily made responsible in proportion as its power is less direct. And democracy also fails, both because the more complete it is the less really is it what it assumes to be, the more multitudinous the less available as power, the more heterogeneous, All forms of government that man has tried or that are available to him, are but the endeavor to balance contradictory self-interests, and to restrain the spirit of the wild beast ever seeking to be loose. And this is the scriptural picture: the vision of the powers of the earth which the prophet sees, and representing them until the Son of man comes in the clouds of heaven, is of four wild beasts (Dan 7:1-28). "Man being in honor, and understanding not, is like the beasts that perish." (Psa 49:20.)
What, then, is the remedy? Nothing, plainly, but the Son of man from heaven. Laws, the best and the worst, fail to execute themselves, and thy sons of men have no hope in them, so long as heaven is still and intervenes not. The Son of man from heaven is the only answer to the long unanswered question. "All judgment committed unto Him, because He is the Son of man" -perfectly intelligent and sympathetic as to man; but come to earth out of the open doors of heaven, in perfect sympathy up there, and so bringing heaven and earth into sympathetic union.
And why has the remedy been so long delayed? It was offered almost two millennia since, and was rejected! offered with amplest demonstration of its reality; rejected with the practical unanimity of all sorts and conditions of men: heaven’s gift, earth’s King, hung up in the face of heaven in utter scorn and face to face rejection! "He saved others," they shouted, "let Him save Himself! He trusted in God: let Him deliver Him!" And so the world has had its free field for experiments in political economy ever since. They are nearly ended now. The Son of man, thank God, is coming back again, and it will not be left any more to the world’s arbitrament, whether they will have Him.
David’s history shows us both these things, "the sufferings of Christ and the glories that shall follow." True history, it takes its place in the books of the former prophets," and is prophetical, as indeed in some sense all true history is. But there is less of this than we are willing to admit, available to our inspection: in that day when the books shall be open we shall find the true.
The Christ? but who is the Christ? Saul, the man of the people, for faith is passed away. Which of this long family of Jesse is worthy to succeed? Eliab is the first-born, and has a beautiful name and a stately presence. Eliab means "God" -or, "my God, is Father," and we have had the name before in the captain of Zebulon’s host in the wilderness, and in very different connection as the father of that Mahan and Abiram who were conspirators with Korah against Moses. "My God is Father" is a glorious reality, which may be on the other hand most terribly abused. As Creator He is the "Father of spirits," and men are in general in that sense "His offspring." Undoubtedly also He would have all men know Him in such endeared relationship. Yet if we take our stand on the ground of creation we ignore the fall; and such was the sin of the sons of Eliab in the wilderness. Granting there be a Christ, is He to be, can He be, Head of the old creation, restorer of the old relationship within the old limits? Notice, again, that this Eliab is the first-born, David at the other end, the eighth: but this is against Eliab, though his goodly presence may appeal even to a prophet. He comes under the law of Genesis, and exemplifies the rule, "first, that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual." (1Co 15:46.) But there is no natural Christ, nor therefore of the old creation; the eighth speaks of the new, and Eliab must give place to David.
Abinadab therefore also is foredoomed; although as the second son, he speaks suggestively of help or of salvation. His name too is good, and in accord with this, "my father is a liberal giver." And why, man argues, should not God, who is good and the Father of men, freely, of His mere good pleasure, remit sin? Why must the Christ be a David, an eighth son, owning in Himself the ruin of man, and descending to the depth of his condemnation to redeem him? But it cannot be: for sin is the dark and fundamental opposite of God, and He cannot dwell with it. To ignore is not to remove it, but to go on with it, and Abinadab can therefore be no sufficient Saviour.
Shammah is the third son of Jesse, but his name is variously interpreted. It is also differently given in Chronicles (1Ch 2:13) as Shimeah, or Shimma. This last word is near akin to Shimeon (Simeon), and should have the same meaning, "hearing," or "hearkening," which is often equivalent to "obedient." But Shammah is from another root, and means "desolation." If there be no mistake in the text, -and in the next chapter it is given again as here, -this, under the number that speaks of holiness, would naturally imply that the alternative of what Eliab or Abinadab expresses must be desolating judgment; but most certainly the Christ-King could not represent such a thought as this.
No other names are given till the last is reached in David, the "beloved," the eighth, taken from the shepherd’s place to fill the kingly one, -in God’s thoughts still the Shepherd’s. As eighth, he shows us Christ as Head of new creation, as we have seen: God’s holiness thus expressed in the link with a new life received from Him, itself the condemnation of the old. But the King is no less the One in whom the Divine Love is shown out toward men. The "Beloved" must be indeed the King after God’s own heart, and in Him of whom the type speaks here the higher and lower kingdoms come entirely together.
David is anointed, and the Spirit of Jehovah comes upon him from henceforth. He is the king designate of God, although the road to the kingdom may be yet a long one, and lead deeply down into the valley of humiliation.
(2) But the Spirit of the Lord departs from Saul, and an evil spirit from Jehovah troubles him. Evil as well as good has its commission from God, -not its existence, but its liberty to act, and the limits of its action. So we see in Job in early times, and in Ahab’s case later; and comfort it is indeed to know this. It is thus the wrath of man is made to praise Him, and the remainder of it He restrains. Nothing can escape from the divine government by the fact or avowal of its being evil. How should it? Thus alone can we be at peace, assured that no waves can rise higher than the footstool of His throne. The work of the evil spirit with Saul was the execution of penalty, and had it led to self-judgment would have proved mercy also. The relief granted, with its known source, was surely that goodness of God which leadeth to repentance. The character of it shows that it was the tempestuous working of Saul’s own spirit that gave the evil one his opportunity, -that brought Saul within the limit ordained him of God. David’s harp does not act directly upon. Satan, but upon Saul. By its strange power of softening and subduing, though but temporarily, the savage temper of the rejected king, the power that assails him is driven back and shut off; for the time he is set free.
The harp of David is the sign of nature even in its lowest and inanimate forms responsive and harmonious in the hand of man. It lies with him, the highest and intelligent creature of God, to bring out and express these harmonies, to make the silence vocal. If he take not his God-given place, the capacity of nature is not known, its depths are unsounded, God’s design and glory in it are obscured and misconstrued. What will be its awakening when the earth is put into the hands of the Second, the ideal Man? How will our David make all nature His harp of many strings, and lead in the anthem of praise from all creation!
But even now it is in His hand, obedient to Him alone, and so harmonious; and it is this, however little understood and realized, that alone checks and restrains the spirit of disorder and anarchy to which at times the powers ordained of God seem given up. Here, too, it acts by the power of that sweet mysterious charm of our David’s melody over themselves -strangers as they may be to Him personally. The Sauls do not become Davids, but they are under the influence of David; and the mere reflection of the glory that shall at last cast out the adversary of men prevails to baffle and turn him back. How vivid is the picture here, and how completely the history justifies itself as prophecy according to, though far beyond, the Jewish conception of these books as the former prophets."
Saul and David will nevertheless yet separate, each to his final destiny: Saul to the fatal field of Gilboa, David to the thus emptied throne, which he will raise to its highest glory.
(3) We now come to the time of David’s manifestation as the deliverer of Israel, the one who alone can meet their need in the day of distress. As a history it is a simple but glorious lesson of faith, and of what it can achieve with no help but that of God; as a type it is a deep and instructive parable of the wondrous salvation which Christ has wrought for His people. It is such an one as by no means carries its meaning upon its face. There are difficulties in it which seem always to have hindered the satisfactory exposition of what has been generally felt must be in it by those who believe at all in any rightful allegorization of these histories. There is a mingling together of different lines of truth which easily becomes entanglement if we do not discern with care. And the remedy for this will be found, not in simply picking out what seems consistent with the meaning we have given it, and dismissing the rest as belonging to the necessary faultiness of such allegoric method, a kind of reasoning which must be the reproach and ruin of the method itself, if it is to be accepted, -but on the contrary, in a fair and full induction of all the facts. While we may not be able to see meaning everywhere, we must not turn away from unwelcome difficulties or accept what is really contradictory to the evidence as a whole.
Difficulties are plain when we look at what is the back-ground of a picture of Christ’s salvation. We find a Philistine war; the adversary met by David vaunting himself a Philistine, if perhaps in fact he be something more; but indeed his Anakite descent (Jos 11:22) does not emerge at all in the chapter before us. If the Philistines then be what we have represented them to be, and what so much scripture combines to assure us that they are, -the ritualistic and successional world-church, -how can it be a champion of this sort that Christ is seen here to meet and slay, and from which He delivers His people? The relation of David to Saul, and much else, if explicable, have yet at least to be similarly explained, before we have the elements of a proper exposition that can rightly challenge acceptance as to what is in the mind of God before us here. One thing is certain, if there be any truth whatever in the interpretation of this whole history as far as we have now arrived, then it is not against a blank wall that we have suddenly come: there is spiritual meaning here as elsewhere; and this belief will surely be justified as the result of the examination upon which we are entering.
(a) The Philistines are the enemies of Saul throughout his reign, and he perishes at last in conflict with them. At this we shall be called to look another time; but that ecclesiasticism as we have seen it in them is ever hostile to the "powers that be," as represented in Saul, is evident. Always open war there is not, but it is always threatening, if not existent for the aim of the world-church is power on earth, and if it has an intoxicating cup for its kings, and can have wanton dalliance, even thus would it cast them down and prevail against them. "Her ways are changeable," says the wise man, "that thou shouldst not know them;" but ever one purpose abides through all.
At the time we have reached, the Philistines are at open war with Israel, have invaded Judah, and are gathered together at Socoh in its territory, camping between Socoh and Azekah, in Ephesdammim, "the boundary of blood." The names here may, though not beyond question as to their meaning, give us more than a glimmer of light. Socoh we have taken elsewhere (p. 103 n.) to mean, as in Lam 2:6, "his tabernacle," and this is named as a principal point at which they aim, while their camp is between it and Azekah, the "fence" by which He would guard it.
Now this guard is by the maintenance of the truth (as we have seen in the place referred to) that there are "two gates," "two ways," and correspondingly two ends: Christ the gate and the way to life eternal, -no other way than Christ; but then, alas! a wide gate and a broad way trodden by the many, and by which there will as surely be reached another end than this. Such is the guard which God has appointed to His sanctuary, the holy conditions which the grace of the gospel affirms, not sets aside. But Philistinism, that is, ecclesiasticism, does set them aside. It has a gate and a way which are not Christ, but which assume His name; which are broader than the true, yet narrower; and by which they penetrate between God’s "tabernacle," which they claim for themselves, and the guard which He has set about it. Sacraments are made to give the "life," which He alone can give, and to sustain it. People are born of God by "water," the "Spirit" being taken for granted, and made subject to the will of man -the officiating priest. Bread and wine by an equal magic become in his hands the very flesh and blood of Christ. Here, in this Babel of unrealities which pass for realities, where the depth of the mystery is only measured by its irrationality, where faith in a sensual superstition becomes a debasing credulity, -here is indeed the entrenched camp of Philistinism, between Socoh and Azekah, in Ephesdammim, the "boundary of blood:" for so thorough is the opposition between the grace of Christ and this legal ritualism that to cross the border-line is a question of life or death: "in her," as the divine record is of Babylon, "was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth." (Rev 18:24.)
Saul and the army of Israel are encamped in the valley of Elah, or "the terebinth," named like the oak from its strength, -if it be not rather the oak itself. Spiritually, the "valley" is indeed the place to find the power that is manifest in life. But it is one thing to be in the position, another to have realized the blessing of it, and this, under their failed head, the Israelites have not done. In the presence of the enemy they have no strength.
A formidable champion now makes his appearance on the side of the Philistines, no doubt one of the old Anakite race, some individuals of which we are expressly told, survived at Gath, the place from which Goliath comes. Spiritually apprehended, we shall find him a giant indeed, and needing, not the might of man, but the power of God to overcome. He is the champion of the Philistines, and must therefore represent them in what is prominent in the principles for which they stand; but he is more than merely a Philistine also: a darker shadow as of vapor from the pit is cast over the picture here.
The derivation of Goliath from galah has the consent of lexicographers; yet corresponding to the several meanings of the verb, there have been suggested several interpretations of the name, it being hard, as far as legitimacy goes, to decide between them. In such perplexity we are entitled to take that which brings light with it rather than what conveys no meaning. That which fits the lock will prove itself as ever to be the key of the lock, to those, at least, who are clear that there is a key somewhere.
Goliath means, then, we believe, "banishment, exile;" to which the city to which he belongs adds intensity of significance. Gath means the "wine-press;" and we have before connected it with what seems its only explanation here, the pregnant saying of the Apocalypse, "He treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of almighty God." "Banishment from God in His wrath," we may take as the true thought conveyed by the threatening figure of Goliath of Gath.
Now the essence of Christianity lies in this, that as the fruit of accomplished redemption we are brought nigh to God. This is what the apostle contrasts with the powerlessness of the law of Moses, for which that was set aside: "There is therefore the disannulling of the commandment going before for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof (for the law made nothing perfect), and the bringing in of a better hope, by which we draw nigh to God." (Heb 7:18-19, Gk.) As he goes on to show (Heb 9:1-28; Heb 10:1-39), the perfecting of the conscience so as to be able to stand in the presence of a holy God was thus what Judaism was wholly unable to effect. Of this the veil before the holiest bore constant witness. The work by which alone the conscience could be set at rest, was not yet done. But it is now done: "By one offering hath [Christ] perfected forever them that are sanctified." Hence there is rest and nearness. Only unbelief can bring in distance between the soul and. God, for we are in Christ, "accepted in the Beloved" unchangeably.
But the knowledge of this is the destruction of Philistinism. The essential character of the false sacramental system is the revival of Judaism, the putting back under its shadows and into distance from God. Thus the church becomes the mediator between the unreconciled soul and God; the sacrifice and the priesthood, though with a juggle of Christian terms which are good for nothing but to conjure with, come back into the old place, but with a deadly falsehood now, such as in Judaism was not and could not be. The very essence of that was that it was predictive and preparatory: the old covenant was to give place to the new; there were "good things to come" that had not come: but this bastard Judaism claims itself to be that which was to come, connects itself with the precious realities of grace, only to degrade, contradict and displace them. It speaks of Christ, of His work, of His grace, ever to substitute its perversions for the truth, and in the name of the Lord rivet its chains upon the free. Here the Philistine leader becomes apparent. Goliath of Gath represents just the denial of reconciliation and nearness to God, which is so manifest in the modern Philistinism, with its Casluhite (p. 74) prate of forgiveness and grace, which is only the devil’s wile to take all meaning out of such blessed words. The essence of Romanism and of all Romanizing systems lies in this, that there is no known and effectual reconciliation. You need the Church, and all the priestly train on earth, -you need the host of saints and angels up in heaven, as intercessors to bring you nigh; and with all this labor, as they quote from the funeral book of the Old Testament for their purpose, "no man knoweth whether he is worthy of favor or hatred." (Ecc 9:1, Douay Version.) The council of Trent condemned the assurance of salvation as the vain confidence of the heretics." If you do not drop out of their hands into hell, you will certainly go to purgatory, and there pay to God the uttermost farthing for your sins.
"Exile from God because of His wrath:" this is indeed the champion of the Philistines. Heaven there is, but afar off, and with a dread uncertainty of ever reaching it. But how can the fear of this throw its shadow over the souls of the Israel of God? Alas! the type before us answers that sufficiently. Unbelief, the slighting of the word of God, the lack of any deep self-judgment, the mixture of the Church and the world: these are prominent and concurrent causes. Mid all the light that people vaunt today the shadows of superstition gather and their hosts stalk abroad, with the giant of Oath still champion of the host. Plain it is that it is the guilty conscience, ignorant of the power of the blood of Christ, that is the strength of all such systems. It is this that builds up priestly authority, and maintains the efficacy of sacramental "mysteries." Peace with God known, accepted consciously in the soul, the terror of wrath is gone, the giant of superstition slain, the arm of Philistia is broken: and thus we are led directly to the apprehension of the conqueror here, who is David, the "Beloved."
The height of the giant may be noted, six cubits and a span, though it is only the number which is plain as that of the full development of evil, and (we may add) unrest. He is in armor of brass, so often connected with the unyielding character of judgment; his heart is shut in with scales of brass: we are too little practised in divine symbolism to go safely further in the interpretation here. He proclaims himself emphatically "the Philistine," as he truly is; and defies any one in the host of Israel to contend with him. And Saul and all the host shrink back in terror.
(b) The history returns to David, and the memory is refreshed as to who he is. All this we are to keep in mind. and carry with us. The three eldest of his brothers follow Saul; but David mind, returned from Saul to his accustomed and significant occupation as shepherd of the sheep. God’s king is in training, and not to be hastily detached from this.
Forty days the Philistine presents himself, morning and evening. The testing of ability to encounter him is to be fully made.
But now David, like Joseph of old -another type of royalty in Christ -is sent upon a mission. He is to seek out his brethren with food for their necessities, and see how they fare. Nor does our king yet disdain such service. He finds them in the ranks, going forth to the battle for which they have so little heart or competence, and sees the Philistine come forth, and hears his challenge. He is intensely and indignantly interested, and no wonder, and again and again questions the people there, "What shall be done to the man that smiteth this Philistine, and taketh away the reproach from Israel?" And again and again they tell him what the king will do.
If this is still to be applied typically, what is the meaning of it? What are we to say indeed of all this introduction of David into the reign of Saul and into the midst of such a conflict as has been already indicated between Israel and the Philistines? For all this has seemed, and with consistency hitherto, to speak of things that are or have been taking place in our own times and dispensation, and how could we introduce the Lord personally, as David would seem to represent Him, into scenes from which He is necessarily absent?
There is here a difficulty indeed, but not an insuperable one. Of course it is true that it would be insuperable, if we had to conceive of our Lord as being here in the body when we know that He is in heaven: this would be entirely inconsistent; yet it is said in the closing verses of the Gospel of Mark just after we have been told distinctly of His ascent into heaven and being seated on the right hand of God, -"And they went forth and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following." Thus still also, we are sure, the Lord works on; and this is no figure of speech, nor even a synonym for the Spirit’s work in men: there is a difference which it is well to be clear about, and which will make what we have here also clear.
Ministry is always under the Lord: "there are differences of administrations (ministries, marg.), yet but one Lord;" and this the apostle says just after he had said, "there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." (1Co 12:4-5.) The two things are widely different: the power is of the Spirit; rule, superintendence, belong to the Lord.
This title, Lord, is moreover, if we may say so, His David, His royal, title; for He is never called king in relation to the Church, but to Israel or the nations,* while in fact the authority which He claims and exercises "Lord" is fully royal. Thus we may rightly speak of His actings here, while He sits upon the Father’s throne above; and these will show Him of course in the character of His rule, and make us realize the joy of being subject to Him. Such views of Him we may expect to realize in that which is before us.
{* Rev 15:3, should read "King of nations."}
As acting upon earth, it will be natural also, to find Him identified with and represented by the servants who serve Him, and even in their sufferings too. While we must carefully remember the limitations which types according to their very nature have, and take heed not to strain the application beyond these. But as to all this we must speak of it in detail as the individual types come before us, and furnish the occasion.
But it is plain therefore that the visit of David to his brethren at this time is not to be interpreted like that of Joseph, of the Lord’s assuming flesh and coming into the world. We must rather take it as applying to what men coldly call a providential visitation. If there took place for instance at the Reformation such a deliverance as we find here from the giant of the Philistines, -if at that time the revival of a gospel which gave assurance and peace to souls delivered men from the distance and estrangement from God which Romanism maintains, and by which it effects its conquests, -then we may rightly consider this to be such a gracious visitation. The true David, the son of Jesse, (of the living and unchanging God,) surely then visited His brethren with the bread of Bethlehem, the Father’s house of bread. Then was the question raised which received in result such unsatisfactory answer, "what shall be done to the man that smiteth this Philistine, and taketh away the reproach from Israel?"
The more this is examined, the closer will be found the application. Was not the answer too much in those days the assurance of what the king would do for Israel’s deliverer? The failure of the Reformation -blessed work of God as there truly was in it -was it not largely in this that Saul, the secular power, and his promises were trusted in, and the princes of the earth sought to as the nursing fathers of the church? But what will they do, what have they done, for the Christ who delivered them? Alas, they sought not spiritual deliverance but temporal, though the means that could alone deliver them were in fact spiritual. The Davids were the divinely raised up champions of the truth, who descended solitary into the valley while the Sauls, yea, and Israel too, cowered in their places of shelter and looked on, to see the victory accomplished for them. In reality this victory was but one, and of One, One Christ acting in His poor followers, whom the Eliabs might insult for pride, and as leaving the few sheep to be exposed in the wilderness, while the work was being done. Yet there was a cause; and they had but to wait to see the vain seeming words become mighty deeds, the giant dead, and the Philistine host in flight!
(c) The words of David are reported to Saul, and though half believing only, he grasps at them. Incredulously he gazes at the stripling whose strength, such as he sees it, is little enough to be measured with that of the Philistine warrior; but David is not dismayed. He has had already his experiences of Jehovah’s deliverances, and his conflict in behalf of the sheep of the flock: so the Lord trains in private those whom He brings forth at last for public use; "not a novice" is His rule for leaders; and David, young as he might be, was none. There was with him the shepherd’s heart which had made him venture his life, not before the eyes of many, nor for a great result, but for a single lamb only. How could he now shrink when the issue was so vast, and the people of God were looking vainly for a deliverer?
His measure of the situation is the measure of faith. Here we find nothing of the gigantic stature of his antagonist, nor of his brazen armor, nor of his practiced soldiership: this has nothing to do with the matter; he is an uncircumcised Philistine, and has defied the embattled hosts of the living God. A very partial induction, it might be said; but for him it was ample. Faith has but to make one inquiry, Where is God in this matter? and having found this, nothing whatever on the opposite side can weigh against this.
Even Saul has to own so plain an argument. He assents, and dismisses him with a pious wish, Go, and Jehovah be with thee! That, indeed, is the whole matter: Israel is not with him, nor Saul, nor anything that flesh values, or the world has confidence in; happy is he who in the face of all this can say, "The Lord is with me! is it not enough?"
(d) But Saul shows that he does not realize this, and must at least clothe David with his own armor, that the battle may be upon more equal terms. And indeed, though not as he meant it, this would have been the case. Saul’s armor was Philistine enough; and David clothed in it would have been novice enough. But he only puts it on to put it off again. He will not use what he has no acquaintance with. So he goes forth, a shepherd, not a warrior, not as one with whom war is a profession, though he may fight when the flock is in peril: with his staff and sling, and five smooth stones only, out of the brook.
The means we use will largely tell the spirit we are of. In themselves of small importance, our making much of them will in fact make them much, though in a different sense from that which we imagine. Paul came not among the Corinthians "with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring the testimony of God." And in this there was not mere human weakness, but the distinct purpose that their "faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." All supplements of spiritual power necessarily carnalize the effect produced; and even where God is working, the result will show itself; perhaps not till after many days. Meanwhile, as with stung fruit, the ripening may seem quicker, while in fact the proper ripeness never is attained.
David had tested his means before the battle. This let us remember, but apply it rightly too. For the word of God is that which must test everything for us, if our experience even is to be of any value. Little should we count it, comparatively, when we have unfailing wisdom of Him who sees the end from the beginning, to whom all things are naked and opened. How we should rejoice, indeed, in the unspeakable blessing of His word -His mind made known to us! As to the weapons of David, we shall see what they mean directly; but we may notice that the five stones already speak in the number of man in relationship with God, which accomplished, as even the person of Christ bears witness for eternity, the issue of the conflict before us is not doubtful.
(e) The combatants now approach to the encounter, and the spirit of each is manifest. With David there is confident assurance, but it is in Jehovah, in whose name he acts, and who is with him, meaning to show Himself as the living God to all the earth, and to make Israel know that He saves neither by sword nor spear, but the issue of the battle is in His hand alone. So, indeed, has God wrought, and for such a purpose, in those great crises of human history in which His hand has been stretched out to break the power of the enemy and deliver men out of his grasp. But above all, when the deliverance has been from spiritual oppression and darkness, and the result of it the bringing of souls into the joy and peace of the gospel, how has God declared His being and name, and how clearly has victory been the result not of human effort or carnal means, but His handiwork alone!
(f) But we must now consider more particularly the means of the giant’s overthrow. This smooth stone from the brook, what is it? may we expect to find a definite meaning in it? It has evidently a most important place in the history: ought it not to have as much in the interpretation, if this is to be consistent, so as to have upon it the stamp of truth?
A smooth stone from the brook is one which has been fashioned by the stream of running (which in Scripture is the same as living) water; and this last we know as constantly a figure of the Spirit of God. Here should be a beginning of understanding for us.
Then a stone shaped by the Spirit of God would naturally make us think of the "living stones" of which Peter speaks, expanding for us the significance of his own name; stones built up into the spiritual house which is built upon the foundation of living stone, which is Christ Jesus. As stones, they are true and divine material for the house of God in contrast with Babel’s bricks of human manufacture (Gen 11:1-32), and are types of permanence and solidity. God’s living stones will abide in their God-given place forever, a sanctuary of praise that will never be taken down or cease to manifest His glory eternally.
If, then, we simply follow Scripture in interpreting Scripture, how well may this smooth stone from the brook in our David’s hand destroy the dread shadow of wrath and alienation from God which the giant of Gath expresses! The stone speaks of divine work and a divine position, of settled nearness to God and indwelling glory! What a salvation indeed is this, and what a triumph over all the power of the enemy! The giant falls, and is slain with his own sword; for by death Christ has destroyed him that had the power of death (Heb 2:14): here the work of the cross finds its place in this grand type; what victory can be accomplished without it? and how plain that every victory of this kind is really His, who alone could handle such a weapon!
At once the Philistines flee, and Israel has only to pursue a defeated foe. As has been said, the whole power of ecclesiasticism is broken for those who have seen the giant fallen. The apprehension of the true Church, and of our individual place in it, in abiding nearness to and joy in God, of necessity overthrows the would-be mediation of the false church with all its hosts of empty intercessors. The imposing array becomes at once but a routed rabble, who proclaim in their very creed their ignorance of God and of His Christ. Ominous now are the names of the places where the Philistine wounded fall, -Shaaraim, "two gates! "* Gath, the "wine-press" of wrath; Ekron, "rooting out." Not a name here but has its tale to tell; the picture is complete even in its minutest features. And how much would the people of God learn of His mind, if they would but set themselves in faith to understand these histories as prophetic scriptures" (Rom 16:26. Greek.) given by Him who sees the end from the beginning, for our instruction and admonition, to whom all the ages are appointed to minister, but who alas, so little heed the wondrous grace of God!
{*See page 103, notes.}
In all this part we can see, whether Christ personally he before us or not, how it is He Himself governs all. If He be pleased to identify Himself with human instruments, yet they are only this, -the force, the power, is in Christ alone. Only so far as they hide themselves in Him can they fill their place or do their work at all. No wonder therefore if, just in the crises of the history, as here in the victory over Goliath, the Sun break through all veils, and the direct glory of the Lord shine on us. We think of the way of the Cross as the true valley of Elah, of him that had the power of death in the Philistine giant, of the resurrection as that which, enabling God to be with us, is the foundation of the Church itself, and the defeat of the foe, putting the sword of death into the Champion’s hand for death’s destruction. If we pursue this further we soon find the veil-cloud closing in again: yet here is the hiding of its power; and the connection with after events of human history only manifests this power as henceforth the ruling factor in the history of man. It is His own voice saying, as of old, "And behold, I am ever with you," and the cloud is but His chariot, -the Christ once humbled is now seen as throned.
2. Between the true king thus manifested and the one rejected of God there cannot be, for a moment, any true fellowship. The nearer they are brought together the more must the essential opposition between them be manifest. On the side of Saul it ripens into enmity which soon breaks through all disguise, and David is obliged to flee from the man to whom he has rendered such important assistance, a wanderer and an outlaw. It is only one form of that spirit which has been in the world since the day of Cain of which the cross was the full, ripe fruit; and which, under whatever partial disguises in professedly Christian lands, exists today the same as ever. Saul may sacrifice to Jehovah, and fill the role of an Israelitish king; but a true Israelite, a "prince with God," he cannot be. Christian governments today there are not, though they make their bow to Christianity and bring their offering: the true King and His representatives can never be in heart welcomed by them, though they may appreciate certain advantages received, and rejoice in some deliverances accomplished for them. These things we shall be called to consider in the fruitful history that lies before us.
(1) At first there is naturally a period of favor and acceptance. There has been undoubtedly a great deliverance, and there is on every side the joy of it. David is in honor with Saul himself. Such a time was realized when the gospel gained its great victories in Reformation times. The papal yoke was broken from the neck of kings and governments; and it seemed as if they must joyfully bow their necks to Christ’s yoke. Nations accepted evangelical creeds, and kings became protectors of the Church. It was not a sign for good, in reality; and yet it was quite natural to accept it as such. In fact, the Churches, in their zeal against popery and ill-considered enthusiasm over the favor of kings, assumed really the position with which the Philistine had reproached Israel, of being "servants to Saul." Nor does Romanism fail still to fling the taunt in the face of Protestantism.
From the beginning, however, Saul shows how little David has been to him. Before the battle in the valley of Elah he had, as we know, been already debtor to him. His harp had broken the power of the evil one again and again, and set him free; and Saul, it was even said, had "loved him greatly." But there is nothing, perhaps, of more various quality than love; and nothing that more takes its color from the subject of it. What need the apostle feels to define for Christians what true love is! We "love" those who please our tastes, -perhaps gratify our mere selfishness; and this love can turn into thorough enmity as soon as self has to be yielded up to it in any wise. True love, on the other hand, "seeketh not her own": it is the very spirit of self-sacrifice; of such love Saul was not capable.
It is not intimated that he has forgotten David: he asks whose son he is. He had known that also, but it had slipped away from him, because he had valued him for his services merely, never had that personal interest in him which makes all belonging to one an interest. In such a case, how easy to forget!
If we think of the spiritual significance, Jesse’s name is full of meaning. The "living God" is indeed the One whom the princes of the earth willingly forget, and the relationship of Christ to Him fades quickly out of remembrance. Hence Christianity becomes for them, at the best, a lifeless orthodoxy; and the captain of the host knows nothing aright of the infinitely greater Captain of salvation."
But the soul of Jonathan is at once knit to the soul of David. Here is a harmony of soul with soul, which of necessity brings such together; and for David Jonathan strips himself, -a type of true and devoted love. Saul may give David an honorable place, -advancing, of course, his own interests thereby; but Jonathan abases self to exalt him. "He must increase but I must decrease," declares in the words of the Baptist the law which is written in the heart, according to the terms of the New Testament.
{*1Sa 18:10, Erdmann and others translate "raved." The word is the identical one for "prophesying," not necessarily as prediction of future events, but as speaking by inspiration, whether from God, or, as here, from an evil spirit.}
Typically, the ordination by God of the secular power, which Jonathan represents, has, as we know, respect to Christ: in its very failure bearing witness of Him who must needs to come to fill aright the throne on earth; stripping itself, as it were, to invest Him with royal garments. With Him is its covenant; and it perishes to make way for Him.
Meanwhile our David consents still to the servant’s place; and in that place serves wonderfully, even to the blessing and glory of the kings of the earth; doing battle for them, also in behalf of the people dear to Him, with whom He is ever "accepted," sometimes also in the sight of Saul’s servants, but only as a "man of war."
(2) Saul’s favor could not last long. His jealousy is awakened by the songs of the women, who exalt David in his deeds above himself. It was only the truth artlessly spoken, which is not because of that more agreeable to a jealous mind. What can he have more, except the kingdom? he argues. The anger of his soul exposes him once more to the attacks of the evil spirit, which for a while seem to have ceased, and now David’s harp has lost its power: Saul casts the javelin that was in his hand to smite him to the wall, and twice David escapes out of his presence. Then fear comes upon Saul: he realizes that Jehovah is with David, and not with himself, and he gives him an inferior place away from him; but thus he is brought still more before the people, and into favor and acceptance with them: and Saul fears the more.
All this may be difficult to interpret with exactness. The general thought it is not hard to see, -the jealousy which in fact the secular power has manifested of, the spiritual, to which it nevertheless owes a great deliverance. It is not within our aim to enter into the history, for instance, of the Reformation churches, which would prove this. Escaped from ecclesiastical control, the states which owed this to the gospel of Christ have speedily enough exhibited their jealousy of Christ’s word, and even in moments of insanity launched the javelin against those who, first of all, would obey Him. The annals of dissent from nationalism and subservience to the state are full of evidence of this, which all who care may find. After which has come uneasy toleration, and perhaps distant patronage, designed to promote state-interests, but at bottom leaving still the breach unhealed. Alas, to heal this, the world must cease to be the world, as Scripture characterizes it, by its passions and its lusts away from God.
(3) The next section has much greater difficulties. The first of these is: are we, or not, to see in David’s marriage to a daughter of Saul a lesson of failure? Is the type a type of that? That Saul meant it for evil is plainly stated, though the Lord did not suffer what he hoped to come to pass; but the after-history shows but little good. She is said to have "loved" David, and we find her shielding him shortly after from Saul; but her justification of herself in that matter is not calculated to raise her in one’s estimation. Her words might well leave Saul to conceive that there would be no obstacle found on her part to her union with another man; nor does anything that we hear of her lead us to imagine it. She is restored by Abner to David after years of dwelling with Phaltiel, only to be seen again mocking the king of Israel for his self-abasement before the ark, and to be heard of as under penalty for this for the rest of her life. On David’s part we do not realize special failure, it is true; but neither do we find God’s blessing on him in it: the history, with one exception, is one of evil and not of good. This being so, we naturally connect it, even as a type, with evil, and not with good.
And this again would prevent us seeing in it a type of the Lord Himself, though it must be assuredly of that or those linked with Him and representing Him in the time of His absence now; and here, alas, even abundant failure is readily conceivable.
Saul’s promise had been given before the victory to make a conqueror of the giant his son-in-law; but that seemed to be forgotten. He renews it only in his enmity against David, to bring about his death at the hands of the Philistines. Even so, his offer of Merab again falls through, and she is given to Adriel the Meholathite, a chapter in history with a terrible ending.
Merab, we know, means "increase," and speaks not of what is spiritual, but of temporal prosperity, which is indeed much of the strength of the Sauls, the kings of the earth, wherever found. But this could not be united with our David, or with those standing for Him in the day of His rejection. Yet Adriel, to whom she is given, has a name which sounds well, signifying "the flock of God"; yet here we should expect as a type a woman and not a man. Christ is the Man; the Church espoused to Him the woman: even "Babylon the great" is that. If then the flock of God be represented here (and the meaning of the name is precise), there must be significance in this also: the woman stands for dependence, the man for independence; and independent indeed must that be which can receive its Merab from the kings of the earth, when she is taken also from the true David to be bestowed upon it.
To this we can add that Adriel is a Meholathite; and meholah signifies a "circling dance." So that all seems to agree in conveying the thought of a church which, without being Philistine, has become separate in interest from and out of fellowship with a rejected Christ; and such as a Saul can afford to honor. Adriel is under no obligation to fight the Lord’s battles, to obtain the king’s daughter.
But Saul has another daughter, and for her he can yet make his bargain with David. There is much difficulty, however, as to what Michal stands for, or even the meaning of her name. Lexicographers in general give it that of "brook," from 2Sa 17:20. But that is the only occurrence, and the meaning is only gathered from the context. According to its apparent derivation it might mean "what holds," and then the word "water" following be needful to explain the application. A word, michla, near akin, means "sheepfold," and such a significance for Michal would seem more appropriate to the type than any: for many a David has been seduced by such an offer of protection for the sheep of Christ, which many a Saul has made and sought to fulfill. But a fold of this kind would be but a snare, and its connection with David loose enough in result. The ambiguity of Michal’s name, which might be, interrogatively, "who can hold?" would thus have its appropriateness also.
Nor need this contradict the force or application of the word as given before, there vaguer and more general, here specific. The names of Scripture, as we have seen elsewhere, have often a fullness and sometimes an ambiguity of meaning that adds to their force. Here to "hold" and to "measure" are meanings near akin. To "hold" God’s sheep in the sense intended is in fact to "measure" them. Yet all this as to the interpretation of Michal is only put forth as suggestion; the difficulty of reading it consistently throughout is great, and this makes against it: verisimilitude is the only law of verification for a type.
That this offer necessitates another encounter with the Philistines is, however, quite congruous with this meaning, and scarcely needs to be explained. During all these wars, moreover, David must be ever the great conqueror. The gospel and those who are identified with it are alone able effectually to deal with modern Philistinism; and in this way, in a wider circle than that of true disciples David’s name is "much set by."
(4) All this fails as a means of conciliation; and victories over the Philistines only inflame the king’s anger. He is soon openly plotting David’s death; though this is for the time stopped by the intercession of Jonathan, the true friend of both. Saul swears by Jehovah, the most solemn oath possible, that David shall not die; and again they are brought together. But a new victory over the Philistines arouses Saul once more, and the old scenes are repeated. David flees again from the murderous hand of Saul, and only escapes by the strategy of Michal, who deceives Saul’s messengers with an image in the bed. But David is now a wanderer, and a new phase of his history is that which is for long to occupy us.
3. Cast out by man, David is the more cast upon God, who appears for him, and identifies Himself with him more and more, as Saul also ripens into more open defiance of God. By the slaughter of the priests and the escape of Abiathar, the means of consulting the divine oracle come into David’s hands, of which he avails himself at Keilah and elsewhere. This time is one in which, as we know, many of his psalms were conceived and uttered, the fruit of exercise and manifold experiences, both of himself and of the goodness of God toward him; a time of truest sanctification and blessing therefore, the spiritual education of the King that is to be.* Here, typically, we shall assuredly find, with outshinings of the glory of Christ Himself, much of the spiritual history of those who have stood most truly for Him, in the day of His rejection: not a dispensational view probably, or the picture of any special period, but of what has been realized in the lives of those in all periods of Christianity faithful to the word of the Lord. And here, no doubt, the lessons will be best learned by those who have most the path to tread.
{*We shall not, however, attempt here to fit the psalms to the history. This needs an examination of the psalms themselves, which could not be given in this place. We must reserve it till, the Lord willing, we come to these.}
(1) At the first step upon it the power which is over Saul is plainly evidenced. David flees, naturally enough, in the first place to Samuel, by whom he had been anointed, and who stood forth before all men’s eyes in those days as, by his nearness to God, apart from all other men. Samuel, if any, had power to stand against Saul himself, and that he would do it there could be no question. Few characters in all Scripture equal Samuel’s for that consistent walk with God, and ability to act for Him, which beget confidence on the part of others. David therefore makes known to Samuel all that Saul has done; and Samuel comes with him to dwell at Naioth,* the collected "dwellings" of the prophets, who gathered around Samuel. The word is a plural, and signifies both dwellings "and "pastures," suiting well therefore that thought of a prophetic "school" with which tradition ekes out the scanty notices of Scripture. Here we might imagine David’s language to be what he generalizes in the psalm as to all those that trust in God: "Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man; Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues." (Psa 22:20.) Yet hence he is driven, to realize a better "hiding-place" in God Himself. (Psa 32:7.) To his retreat Saul pursues him: after sending three times in vain his messengers, he follows them himself. But upon all alike the Spirit of God comes, subjecting them perforce to itself, so that they prophesy; and upon Saul before he has even reached the place, and with effect deeper and more lasting, -reviving the saying which had earlier gone forth about him, "Is Saul also among the prophets?"
{*Or, as in the Kethib (the "written" text), Nevaioth.}
And how must Saul’s mind also have gone back to those earlier days, before yet the Spirit had been grieved away from him, and when all the possibilities of the divine call to the throne of Israel were opening before him! What tender recollections to touch the heart with, and to bring, if it might be, this wanderer to himself! Then, how vain to contend with power such as this! Who ever hardened himself against God and prospered? On the other hand, what an assurance of One ready still to receive, -who would, even by force if it were possible, put Saul among the prophets! Yet against all this, as we know, Saul did harden himself, and became necessarily more evil in proportion to the grace resisted, according to the constant and inevitable law of cause and effect.
For David himself what an assurance of the eternal arms, though invisible, that were around him! Yet he goes forth, for deeper experiences of God’s living care, in the rough scenes beyond, than he could find even in that sheltered retreat, and in that atmosphere thrilling with His voice. Yet here we see for a moment, in a vivid picture, how brightly the spiritual life might manifest itself in Israel in a time such as this, and how near God drew even then to His people that sought Him. Is it too much to say,with the apostle’s words in view (1Co 14:1-40), that now, when Moses’ desire that "all the Lord’s people were prophets" has found its practicability of accomplishment in the fulfillment of its other part, -"that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them," -there should be in every Christian assembly a display of divine power as great as this, and a glory of the divine presence fuller and nearer far? Oh that it were indeed so! Here we find that even then there were many more prophets than those whose voices have come down to us. Now that "ye may all prophesy" is limited only by the unbelief that cannot understand this, or the coldness of heart that has no response to it. Alas for the privileges unenjoyed that will one day rise up against us! Rather let us take now the reproach, and find in the grace of our God the available remedy.
The typical meaning is not so hard to understand, as the application may seem slight and trivial. But the secular power has, in fact, in its relation to the divine King, such different phases. It can prophesy falsely under evil inspiration, or truly under that which is of God: it can favor for the moment the true King and those identified with Him, or bitterly persecute them. All this is perfectly plain, -so plain we need not dwell upon it. It can even, under the spiritual impulse, strip itself of its royal robes, and prostrate itself as the feeble creature it is, in the dust before God. But its general course is little affected by this: the world abides still the world: it may be Protestant, -not Romanist; Israelite, -not Philistine; but still it is the world, and the man in honor in it is not the man after God’s heart, but the people’s, -away from God.
(2) A more sorrowful scene still is that which follows. The breach with Saul is realized to be no temporary one, and its effect is found in the separation of those who are brethren. The long account which fills a chapter of our Bibles shows how the Spirit of God would emphasize this. The fact is a very familiar one indeed: the sorrow of it every heart taught of God must realize.
Jonathan and David part! But what then does Jonathan stand for in this connection? Clearly if in the first place he represent, as we believe, that ordination of God by which the "powers that be" become the objects of recognition on the part of Christians, Jonathan would represent here those who make this recognition govern them in their position ecclesiastically. They love David, but they cling to Saul. They interpret God’s sanction of the civil power so as to make it in some sense a spiritual power as well. They use Jewish analogies to illustrate Christian relationships, and make a theocracy out of Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom. The state-church Protestantism developed many Jonathans, whose hearts and consciences were in opposition to one another; and where the state church survives such will still be found.
Jonathan is forced to realize for himself the enmity of Saul against David, -not a momentary paroxysm of madness, but a malignant spirit, which would once more sacrifice Jonathan himself for thwarting its stubborn pride. He has to acquiesce in David’s departure, for the arrow does not fall within the limit of safety to him. So they part: Jonathan to place and honor, and then the fatal conflict at Gilboa; David, through present suffering and rejection, to a throne. The appointed path for us also is found here: "if we suffer we shall also reign with Him."
(3) The next incident in David’s life is noticed in each of the synoptic gospels, as used by the Lord to illustrate and enforce His affirmation that "the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath." (Luk 6:5.) Here David is lord of the show-bread, which, though holy according to the law, is, under the circumstances, common; and which he not only takes, but gives to those that are with him.* Everything was in ruin in Israel. Since the captivity of the ark in the Philistines’ land, it had never returned to the sanctuary, which had been itself shifted from place to place, till now it was at Nob, not even a priestly city according to the original designation of these by lot in Joshua’s time, and from which it was soon to be again violently dislodged. The absence of the ark involved that of the mercy-seat or "propitiatory" which covered it, and this again complete inability to carry out the ordinance of the day of atonement, all-important as this was for Israel’s acceptance with God. Nor does there seem to have been any realization of the greatness of their loss: "we inquired not at it" -the ark -says David himself, "in the days of Saul." (1Ch 13:3.) Yet it was the throne of the Lord, where was His dwelling-place between the cherubim.
{*In the history these are not spoken of except by David himself and where he is bent upon misleading the high priest; but it does not therefore follow that this was part of the deceit, and the Lord’s assurance is warrant enough for every Christian.}
God had indeed raised up Samuel as an extraordinary link between the people and Himself. But Samuel too had been finally rejected by the people, as we have seen. Nor had Saul, the people’s choice, though permitted to them by God, ever stood even in Samuel’s place. He in turn having been rejected, David had become the anointed of the Lord; and now David was fleeing from the face of Saul, an outcast and a wanderer. In this state of things,what virtue could remain for them in the old institutions? Upon David alone everything now depended, and thus we can understand his words, enigma as they are still to most interpreters, "it" -the show-bread -"is in a manner common; yea, even when it is sanctified that day in the vessel."* David says "in a manner common," because after all God had not done with these institutions, which soon were to be revivified, and endure for the appointed time. They were "common," as subject to his needs, just as, according to the Lord’s own comparison, the Sabbath ordinance was of no force to set aside the higher obligation of the temple services. (Mat 12:5.)
{*This has been also very variously rendered by translators and commentators in most strained and awkward fashion. "It is a hurried, excited sentence," says the American editor of Lange, "almost utterly obscure." Rather, it has been obscured by lack of intelligence on the part of the interpreter.}
The priest may only partially have understood David: we, however, can understand him without difficulty. But we can go far beyond even what David knew, and see in all these things shadows of things that were to come. We can see in David rejected the type of a greater, who as such has abrogated Jewish and legal ordinances in order to give His people that communion with Himself beyond these, of which the "bread of presence" speaks. But we must look at this more closely.
It is striking indeed that, while the show-bread is spoken of and commanded in the book of Exodus, we have to wait till nearly the end of Leviticus before it is particularly described. Where we should naturally expect to find it, it is omitted; and the place in which it is actually found is in that fifth part of the book, in which, as the Deuteronomy part, the ways of God are set before us. It comes, in fact, immediately after the typical account of those "set times" in Israel, which represent those dispensational "ways," that, while they include Israel, go far beyond His purposes toward her. (Lev 23:1-44.)
But not only so, the institution itself, -most strangely, as it would seem, for an Israelitish ordinance, -is found in that chapter immediately following this, in which, in contrast with Israel’s rejection (seen in the punishment of the blasphemer), God’s maintenance of light and communion with Himself in Christianity is shown. (Lev 24:1-23, notes.) And the latter of these is what the show-bread represents! How plainly it is what our own rejected David may claim by special right!
When we come to look at the details, how fitly do they unite with such a thought! For we have seen how this "bread of presence" speaks of Christ for us on high, the true "corn of the land" upon which His people feed, and in whom they are brought to God and accepted of Him. "It is presence-bread, with the incense of His acceptability upon it, and the twelve loaves making us to know His representation of His people, their identification with Him before God." But this is special Christian position, as well as communion. How justly again may our David distribute such bread as this among His own!
Thus the Lord vindicates the title of His followers, who follow Him in His poverty and rejection, to that which is indeed ennoblement and enrichment passing thought. Here we find the food with which faith, obedient to His call, is recruited and sustained; and it is received from the priest’s hand, who is Ahimelech, "the king’s brother." In Christ the King and Priest are thus in close relationship, and such a ministry of blessing as we have been thinking of must of course come from the great High Priest. His mediatorial work is that from which of necessity all this comes.
Now we have noticed the presence of the enemy, the Edomite, whose name, if names have meaning, seems at first sight a strange enough one in such a connection. It is Doeg, "the fearful"; but are not our fears the greatest enemies that can be to our David and His followers when being Himself rejected, to follow Him means to share His rejection? Who is not conscious of it? Nor need we wonder to find him chief among such shepherds as a Saul might have. His presence, "detained before Jehovah," not of his own free will we may be sure, will be found to have its disastrous effects on the future near to be. Meanwhile we can trace a more than superficial connection with what follows here, where David, in answer to his request for spear or sword, has put again into his hand Goliath’s sword, with which he had slain the giant. The death which has annulled death, and which abides in perpetual memory with God, what a defense is that for the people of God, in all the attacks of the enemy! What a weapon against fear itself! Thus they are both fed and furnished.
In all this nothing has been said of David’s deception, fraught with such evil consequences as we know it was to him who at this time succored him. The man whose life yields us, more perhaps than any other, the most fruitful types of the Lord Jesus Christ, shows himself thus how far removed from the perfection which he shadowed. But who is not? Upon such things Scripture itself in general makes no comment. Such is man! "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of"?
(4) And this is manifest in the next act of David: with the sword of the Philistine champion in his hand, he flees to the Philistines, and to Gath, the city of the giant, from the face of Saul.
The experience of weakness is one with which God would have us thoroughly well acquainted. It is the healthful condition of a creature, necessary to him as such, and no distress but the opposite, in proportion as we know God as the One in whom "we live and move and have our being." Then we can be still and let Him show His might, and under the shadow of His wings find refuge. Sin has made such experience more than ever necessary for us, by the very fact that it has made distress of weakness, which could never be were the breach between us and God fully healed. Faith implies this healing; but we must know ourselves little indeed, if we know not how weak faith is. Every fresh need demonstrates it, and thus the manifold experiences are ordained to us, which, whatever shame they may cause us by the way, are to end in glorifying Him in all things, and thus in truest blessing for ourselves.
David is indeed now brought low, into just the place of glorious revelations of the living God, or painful revelations of the flesh in man. He finds for himself the latter, just by taking counsel of his own wisdom and his fears. We do not know by what strange or plausible arguments he succeeded in persuading himself that refuge was to be found in Gath, among the enemies of Israel, against whom he had gained all his victories and his fame. The human heart is so subtle an advocate that it can make its way through the plainest and most contradictory array of facts to its conclusion; but it cannot bring the event to harmonize with this. David thus finds at Gath his own history against him, and the glorious achievements of God by him his bill of impeachment in the court of Achish. What else could he expect? Could he even desire that they should accept him as an apostate from those convictions that had nerved his arm and strengthened his heart in those days but a short time past? or suppose that, this pressure over, he would not return to be the same enemy of the Philistines that he had been before? Yet what an account to give, that he must be a debtor to Philis tine compassion for that refuge which the God of Israel had failed to be to him? How inconsistent and miserable is unbelief! -only consistent in tending to gravitate to a continually lower depth. Is there possibly a place in which God is not sufficient? Thence it is easy to reach the question, Where is He then sufficient? Faith, to justify itself at all, must take and keep the highest level, -an omniscient, omnipresent, all-sufficient, ever available God; and then how does the nothingness of man only give occasion to the display of the power and glory of God!
But in a Philistine refuge to maintain faith at this level is not possible: there is inevitable, therefore, the collapse which follows. The mention of his own great deeds makes him sore afraid before Achish, king of Gath; and to save himself he sinks yet lower, acting the madman in the presence of them all, and escaping under cover of what in the East was considered in some sense a divine possession. Thus a real shame must be made to retrieve from a false shame, and a sham folly rescue from the consequences of the real one. Openly the Lord does not interfere: He cannot honor unbelief by doing so: yet to shame it is to give real help. Still there is no victory over the Philistine here: the victory is rather on his side.
(5) But David has escaped, and that every way: we find him next back again in Israel; and, though still a fugitive, yet with God, and gathering strength. At Adullam a company begin to gather round him, at first apparently as poor in character as bankrupt in resources; yet out of these are developed the mighty men of whose exploits by and by we shall hear much, and who encircle David when he rises to the throne. Disciplined by danger and strife and adversity, they go in and out with one who has the power of winning men to himself, and are won, and modeled upon the pattern of their great leader. What is represented here is simple enough for those who realize Christ to be still rejected by the world; to others it will not be. Scripture still, however, asserts, whether the days be changed or not, that "if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him"; and again, that we are "joint-heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together." (2Ti 2:12; Rom 8:17.)
Thus, though Christ is gone from the earth, there is still possible, still necessary, a fellowship with Him in His sufferings, -a fellowship of those whose hearts have been won by Him in such sort as to make them practically associates with Him in a life not of the world, and with which the world therefore has no sympathy. It may be true that only exceptionally they are found now "in dens and caves of the earth," and that the time is past when "witness" and "martyr" were but the same word, as implying the same thing. Satan changes his tactics without ceasing to be Satan; and the world may adopt the Christian dress without ceasing to be the world. Still, under whatever exterior, the essential opposition remains.
Adullam we have already taken to mean "a witness indeed," and appropriate enough is such a meaning here. A witness that cave was to the state of things in Israel: the anointed king with such a poor little handful of followers round him, and these brought to him by their necessities. Yet here was the path with God, though of even the people of God but few indeed were there. How plain that majorities decide nothing in the things of God, -and that we must guard ourselves, at all costs, from being carried away with them! The faith that cannot walk independent of man has little indeed to evidence itself to be faith. And yet how sadly does the tendency to go in droves manifests itself among the people of God. Conscience thus loses its place as what is before God alone, and the whole character of life is lowered.
Once more David’s faith seems to waver now. His family has fled to him; and lives more precious to him than his own are in his hand. How often does this dependence of others upon us test more the simplicity of faith than anything simply affecting ourselves! The thought of Moab as a refuge for his father and mother would be most natural indeed to a descendant of Ruth; but her history, nevertheless, had a widely different lesson for him. Strikingly similar, in effect, are those two names -Elimelech, "my God is king," and Jesse, "Jehovah exists." Elimelech and Jesse, fugitives in Moab, how contradictory to the import of their names! And the Moabitess, who left her country to come into poverty and reproach in Bethlehem, would she have counseled a return to Moab? No; for the word is -David’s own word, when he had learned the lesson -"Dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed." (Psa 37:3, Heb.) The land was Israel’s inheritance, God’s gift, of which nothing therefore could deprive the faith that laid hold of it. Of this we have warning directly: for when he had safely deposited his father and mother with the Moabite king, how natural, when rest allures, and the cords of a new relationship are felt, for David to make himself also a "hold" there! But the prophet’s voice -a new prophet, whose name speaks of militant energy, Gad, like the patriarch’s -drives him forth again: "Abide not in the hold: depart, and get thee into the land of Judah."*
{*Which shows that the "hold" was not at Adullam, which was in Judah.}
How readily we seek escape from trial! And indeed we do well not to seek trial, or brave it. Being what we are, the right prayer is naturally for us, "Lead us not into temptation." Distrust of self is right, and a proper spirit to face trial itself with. Then if after all, He appoints this to us, we go into it clinging fast to Him, and we are safe and blessed: for "my brethren," says James, "count it all joy, when ye fall into divers temptations: knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience; but let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." (Jas 1:2-4.) How wonderful a reward! -and how simple a way, apparently, when we know in Whose hands we are! But, ah, the many hands in which we seem to be, -the Sauls’, the Doegs’, the people of whom we have deserved quite other things! How hard to accept these cruel and remorseless hands as the tender hands of God! There lies the victory of faith for us; there is the inlet of rest and assurance into the soul. This is our true inheritance also, from which we may not be driven, and must not wander, our "land of Judah," which is "praise."
"And David departed, and came to the forest of Hareth:" Hareth means "cutting," as of engravers’ work. It occurs but once in the Old Testament, and that with reference to the handwriting of God upon the tables of the covenant (Exo 32:16): a precious link of connection, surely; for thus was it that God was graving His law, His holy will for him, upon David’s heart. Slowly it might be, and painfully; for so the different material of the tables of the new covenant implies; but the work done will be the greater and more glorious.
(6) Saul in the meanwhile pursues the path to ruin; and by the massacre at Nob cuts off with a violent hand all that yet links him with God and the sanctuary. No doubt he believed in the treason of Ahimelech, for he was in no mood for due consideration or the weighing of evidence. He is possessed with enmity against David, and the uneasy sense that he is striving with the inevitable. Caution and reserve are gone. He freely imputes to others, even to those of his own tribe with whom he has surrounded himself, only the self-interest which alone he can appreciate. Of necessity he is not sure of them, and can only hope to keep them as long as he can make the better offer.
Of course he does not lack those who for their own gain will act as ears and hands for him, and nurse his suspicions into more assurance. He hears of David’s movements; he learns of his son’s covenant with him; he finds, through Doeg, how David has been succored at Nob. What a curse to one in Saul’s condition the ready sympathy with which it meets, -the many arms outstretched to pull down over the precipice one blindly seeking it! Such is the shadow that dogs the powerful, -the retribution that the world has for the sinner. With Saul now the kingdoms whose history is here before us are drifting far apart: until the end we have only to say to him as he crosses the path of David.
The massacre at Nob throws the priesthood with Abiathar upon the side of David. With him, therefore, prophet, priest, and anointed king are found together; as yet, however, rejected of the people. Divine resources are his, though the path of obedience is that of trial still; and that we are to find in a new series of trials.
4. We have thus seen David furnished for the path: he has followers to about the number of 600 now, by whom we shall soon find him doing service in Israel, and God is openly with him, according to His manner of showing this in the days we are looking back to. Yet he is not, on that account, spared the trial by which he is exercised and fitted to be the true Shepherd-King of Israel when the fullness of time is come. These experiences come now more fully before us, which, while putting before us Him who was in all things tempted like as we are, apart from sin, speak necessarily, therefore, also of those who tread the wilderness-path after, yet with, Himself. The history of David here is, of course, largely that of His followers also.
(1) First of all, we see the power that is his from God; but power only to be used against the enemies of Israel, and not against Israel themselves. The Philistines fight against Keilah, and rob the threshing-floors. The sanctuary "refuge," which we have taken Keilah to figure (p. 107, n. ), will naturally be an object of attack by those whose whole power depends upon keeping the people of God out of their place of acceptance and blessing in Christ in heavenly places. No way so effectual, either, as that of robbing the threshing-floors! For the provision of bread being cut off, the word of God and He who is the true Word, being no longer ministered, this would of necessity starve them out even of such a vantage-ground. Saul, too, could not be expected to work any deliverance here: we do not find him even attempting it. A secularized religion scarcely favors more such blessedness than the ritualistic one would do. Thus David is evidently the whole resource of Keilah. By the Lord’s guidance, therefore, and with His assurance of success, he quiets the fears of his men, and leads them against the foe; and Keilah is delivered, -a glorious and important victory.
Saul soon hears that David has come to Keilah: nothing is heard or accounted of the essential service he has rendered there; for, in fact, Saul is quite ready to sacrifice Keilah itself, if only in this way he can gratify his hatred against David. David is the representative of that higher kingdom which Saul must obey or fall before it, and disobedience has become with him now a frenzy of despair, in which he maintains a hopeless fight with forces that are known to be beyond him utterly, though he will not own or act as if they were so. How solemn, how tremendous, is such a struggle of the creature with the Creator,where the creature puts forth all its power of self-deception to prevent for a little time the collapse that is inevitable, and which will only be in this way more utter and irretrievable when it comes!
David, on the other hand, is more than ever completely intelligent as to the Lord’s will, and in subjection to it; and for him the end is not doubtful, nor one that he must disguise from himself. The power that works through him is as much master of Saul as of the Philistine enemy; but it is power held back by long-suffering mercy. The shepherd-rod is the type as much of service as of authority; and the shepherd-ruler is the incarnation of self-sacrifice, as Saul is of self-seeking. The people are not yet ready for the kingdom that shall be, and the men of Keilah will, under pressure, deliver up their saviour. David and his men evacuate the city, therefore, to take up again their wandering life, going whither they may; and Saul is still, as it may seem, the master. But master he cannot be who is not, before all things, master of himself; nor he master of himself who has not God his master. God is the harmony of all things: in the first revolt against Him are unloosed the forces of intestine strife, the issue of which is dissolution.
(2) David has escaped his enemy once more, and is now at Ziph; not escaped from the trial which is needful, and which is, under God’s hand, carefully controlled for blessing, -a blessing which, in the Psalms, he acknowledges many times with a full heart. Ziph means, according to what we have before seen, "refining." (See pp. 97, 113, n.) We shall find it in this place also answering to its name. The precious metals -the gold and the silver of this world -need such processes to display their character; and all the elect of God -save One, the chief Elect -need and undergo this process. In David we have to recognize, as often said, not simply the One who never needed purification, but also those who are identified with Him by His grace, and who, on their way to share with Him His kingdom and glory, share with Him too the sufferings that lead on to this. Thus the apostle, after giving us the precious examples of those who have "obtained a good report through faith," and bidding us in like manner "run with patience the race set before us," puts before us the absolutely perfect example, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of faith." He does not say or mean "of our faith," but that He it is who has led in and perfected in His own Person the whole course of faith: "who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down on the right hand of the throne of God."
He goes on to inspirit us with His example: "for consider Him who endured such great contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be weary and faint in your minds; ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin."
With Him who was perfect, this sin against which He strove was something external to Himself, the very contradiction of sinners to the Holy One, the necessary contradiction of natures utterly opposed. But for those who but feebly follow Him in this path, and thus partake also of His sufferings, even the very opposition and persecution of men are overruled for a purpose which there could not be with Him; and so the apostle goes on: "And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him: for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." (Heb 12:1-29.)
David thus could not represent the Lord in the "place of refining," for in Him there was no mixture, no dross to be purged away; but there are those identified with Him on earth, witnesses for Him, and thus sharers of His sufferings, and who, even as this, do need their Ziph, and find it; aye, even, the foremost that have stood for and represented Him, and with whom He has stood. So that Ziph has its place in this picture.
In regard to its numerical position also, let us notice that "refining" is a process of separation, of division, for which the number stands; and so the conflict between good and evil tends to necessary separation of one from the other. Men and things come to show themselves according to their affinities: as here, a Jonathan for, a Saul against; and by reason of use we have our senses exercised to discern both good and evil. This discernment is the result of the light, the judgment that takes place in the presence of God, who is Light.
Accordingly, the story of Ziph divides into two parts, what is evidently for, what is apparently against. In reality, all is for, both the one and the other. But we begin with what is evidently so when, while Saul is seeking for his life, Jonathan comes into the wood where David is hidden, and strengthens his hand in God. How blessed is thus the meeting of faith with faith, and how great the confirmation which we can bring each other! This is mentioned first also, the strength of it being needed for the encounter soon to come. And this is part, too, of the process of refinement, the encouragement in God without which we could not so abide the separation and strife. A tender hand is laid upon this poor human material, to hold it steadfastly in the place of necessary testing.
The Ziphites are recreant Judeans; but they, too, do the work they are permitted. From the hill of Hachilah to the wilderness of Maon Saul pursues the object of his hatred, just being on the point, as it would seem, of getting him into his hand, when the Philistines become God’s hands to fence David around, and Saul turns from his prey at the "rock of divisions," to go against the national enemy. Plainly not David’s "subtle dealing" has saved him, but a divine intervention; and this is of the greatest importance, not only for Saul, but for David himself. He has been brought to an end of all his own wisdom and power, to find himself held fast in the hand of God, and covered by the hand that holds him. And this realization of the nothingness of man and of the greatness of God, with the joy of knowing that this God is for us, what is it -stated, indeed, in its mere elements but that which every refining process is designed to bring us to?
(3) We next find David at Engedi, once more pursued by Saul, but who now falls into the hands of the one he persecutes, only to experience, however, from him the mercy he had never shown, and to be shamed into a confession of his sin, which for the time ends the pursuit.
Engedi means "the spring of the young goat," the force of the latter word being really "leaper." The spiritual thought has been already indicated (p. 117, n.); and there should be such agreement between the name and the history before us as we have been able to trace in similar cases. Engedi reminds us of how the wilderness and the hill of difficulty become, in the wisdom of God, schools of training and begetters of strength. The tread and leap of the wild goat are the very symbols of strength gained by practice and ready surmounting of difficulties; and the name is interpreted and emphasized for us where it is said that "Saul went to seek David and his men upon the rocks of the wild goats (climbers)." They were in the same circumstances with the same results. Trial and hardship were forming character, as we know, and mighty men were being produced, masters of themselves and of their circumstances, by the exigencies they were called to face from day to day.
This is, in fact, what we find as to David here. The unexpected visit of Saul to the cave, putting him so completely into his power, the murmured suggestion of his followers that here now was his God-given opportunity, the moment calling for the briefest possible decision, -all needed the alertness and self-command of habitual exercise, such as befitted the divinely appointed ruler of Israel. And David displays remarkably these qualities. You see the evident effect of continual waiting upon God, in the abhorrence of the thought of injuring Jehovah’s anointed, the tender conscience which smites him for even cutting off Saul’s skirt; while yet his heart throbs in the impassioned appeal which for a moment melts down all Saul’s pride and enmity, and might seem to have found beneath it a true and quite other man than the Spirit-forsaken, spirit-haunted despot of the past sad years.
And in all this David shows us also the source of this spiritual power which he manifests, or in the language of the symbols here, the "spring" at which the "leaper" has renewed his strength. One sees manifest in his utterance the supreme assurance that he has, that all things are absolutely subject to Him to whom he has committed himself entirely, who will in His own time and way act for him, and whose acts he will not anticipate. "Jehovah shall be judge, and judge between me and thee; and He shall see, and plead my cause, and do me justice from thy hand. My hand shall not be upon thee." This seems but the lesson of Ziph learned, -a simple but a great one indeed; and the two sections are thus naturally connected.
Saul is more than touched; he is broken down, -seems, indeed, won: owns everything, realizes the mercy that has spared his life, declares his own conviction that David should be king, -engages him, even with an oath, not to cut off his seed after he is gone: alas, in a short time has forgotten all this, and is as if it had never been! How terrible is that process of self-hardening in a human soul, wherein "all things work together for" ruin and destruction, as they do for "good to them that love God"!
Spite of Saul’s confession, David can no more trust him, nor can Saul even expect him to do so: he abides still in the wilderness.
(4) David has gained a great victory: he has conquered Saul; he has done much more, -he has conquered himself also. Nay, he has shown the habitual self-mastery of one walking before God indeed. Alas, the next time we are called to contemplate him, it is as an example of thorough failure, and that in the very way in which he has just proved himself so strong and competent.
Saul was not only unmistakably his enemy, -he was a most powerful one; and David had suffered at his hand the loss of most things that men count dear. Nor had his will and power to inflict evil come to an end,when just now he had been so magnanimously spared, and dismissed in peace. Nabal, with whom he has now to do, is proud and niggard and insolent. But he cannot be considered in the same sense an enemy; and if he were, he is comparatively a contemptible one. David has no cause whatever to fear him, nor does he for a moment suppose he has. With such an one how easy to show the magnanimity that, in Saul’s case, cost so much to show! Yet it is precisely here that David fails entirely. He is not merely not magnanimous; he is terribly severe and unjust. Denied that to which he might have a moral but no legal claim, and his well-meant advances answered with insult, he blazes out into a passion of wrath which would involve with Nabal every male of his house in indiscriminate slaughter! Can this be the same man that we have been just admiring for his noble control and self-forgetfulness? Can this be the shepherd-king of Israel, the ruler in the fear of God, the man who himself has felt the unrighteousness of men, the man disciplined in the school of suffering? It is the same, and not the same. It is David, no longer under the control of the presence of God: and at once all that is sweet and gracious, all that is of God, all the fruit of His training, all the good of having been under His yoke, seems suddenly to have passed away. Is there, then, a Saul existing even beneath a David, ready to show itself as soon as the guard upon it is removed, unchanged from what it was before faith came? Yes, it is even so; and our best remedy is to be conscious of it, that we may realize our utter dependence at all times upon God. Not as sinners, but as saints it is that we are called to "have no confidence in the flesh." Prayer is a constant necessity to us; and, waiting upon the Lord, our strength shall be renewed. What a lesson have we here in David! No ephod was needed or used when the four hundred started on their dread errand to Carmel! But the message he had not sought came to him from the faithful grace of God through the lips of a woman.
Yet everything now depended upon David: Samuel had just passed away, and at Ramah the watch of the prophet was kept no more. If our interpretation of Ramah has been In anywise correct, then the end of the long watch there must be as significant, typically, as the death of Samuel was, in fact, for the nation of Israel at the time. Samuel is Christ as Prophet, before the true King has come to His rights on earth; and thus, with his gatherings of prophets round himself, would correspond to David as the rejected King, with his gathering also of those who maintained his kingship: both in entire subjection to the will of God which ordained a time of patience and long-suffering. Both, therefore, look on to the present Christian times, as we have seen, when Christ, though not personally on earth, watches here with the company of His prophets, and is in the midst of those who confess Him Lord. Ramah, then, being gone, should imply the end of the present night-watch, which would imply also a related and yet far different change at hand for the confessors of Christ’s Lordship. His reign is now at hand, which they are to share with him; and the facts of the history answer to this.
David arises, therefore, and goes down to the wilderness of Paran, which has before been interpreted to mean "adornment." (Num 10:12, n.) As to application, however, everything is different here from there; and in the line of things now before us we should naturally think of how "the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." (Isa 35:1.) But this is only nearing, and not accomplished.
A very difficult part of the history is now before us, if we are still to find, as we ought ever to find, a spiritual meaning underlying the literal, and if this is to be traced also in consistent relation to the whole connection here. But such a meaning assuredly there is, and therefore we may go forward with confidence in the promise to him that seeks. The need of this consistency is as much a help as it is a safeguard to interpretation; and it were better to acknowledge entire failure than to wrest from its proper force the blessed word of truth.
We are now introduced to a man of Israel, who lives in Maon, and whose possessions are in Carmel, but who is Nabal, "a fool," and is smitten for his folly. We shall find these places together in a portion of Judah which we have already taken as memorializing for us Israel’s blessedness, -Maon, "dwelling-place," the habitation of God, and Carmel, "vineyard," His place of fruit. But yet the man, though of the house of Caleb, has fallen away wholly from the character of Caleb. He is, as already said, Nabal, the word used where it is written, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." Indeed this is what in Scripture "folly" mostly connects or is identified with, just as, for Scripture also, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."
{*1Sa 25:22. One might imagine an interpolation here, and the Septuagint omits "the enemies of"; the Vulgate and Chaldee versions, however, agree with the Hebrew, and indirectly the Syriac and Arabic. See Lange’s Commentary.}
In contrast with this apostate Israelite is his wife Abigail, the "father (or source) of joy," as most would render it; but this, for its application, must look forward.
Nabal is shearing his sheep in Carmel, and indulging himself after his manner, when David sends ten messengers to salute him, and to seek from him an acknowledgment of the care which had been taken of his shepherds in the wilderness. Nabal answers, reviling David as a runaway servant, and his company as people of whom he knows nothing; and flatly refuses. David’s men return to convey the message and the insult to their master.
If we take all the surroundings here, the death of Samuel and the altered position of David, the character and connections of Nabal, we seem naturally to find in him a picture of Israel in its apostate condition in the last days. The demand of David’s messengers would then speak of the last divine testimony to them, which finds them in ignorance and rejection of Christ and of His claims, but which calls out from them, however, a remnant figured in Abigail, who, by their faith avert judgment from the nation, though divine judgment comes indeed on the apostate part. The remnant, severed thus from their old relation, are united to Christ as King of Israel.
That Abigail pictures the Christian Church is a view which has most of these points against it, while it seems to involve a dislocation of the period at which it is presented. Abigail has, in fact, much that reminds us of Ruth, widowed also by the judgment of God, and united to her deliverer, -while, of course, there are in either case features entirely different.
That there are no difficulties in this view one could not affirm, but they are found to the full as much in any application to the Christian Church, and are precisely the same difficulties. The principal one seems to be the failure so manifest in David on this occasion, and out of which Abigail is herself the means of his deliverance. This, in any view of this kind must, of course, be left out of all significance in relation to the type, as simple failure of the human representative. Such things we have elsewhere, though scarcely one, perhaps, where the failure comes into such prominence. And David must, of course, in this case stand for Christ personally, -could not represent any who might be identified with His claims on earth, -so that the incompatibility cannot in this way be accounted for.
The failure seems manifest in David, even to the end: the double marriage at the close cannot impress one favorably as to him, though here the type would not be affected by it. Ahinoam, the Jezreelitess, may, indeed, in this way, as in the case of other double types, confirm the significance. For here, again, we have the name of a city finding place with Maon and Carmel in the same section of Judah’s territory, and one which has a manifest relation to Israel’s restoration. Thus, when she is united to the Lord in the coming day, Ahinoam, the "kin of pleasure," may be a not unsuited name, while Jezreel reminds us of the promise then to be fulfilled, "I will sow her to me in the earth." To the Christian Church the latter could hardly apply.
The faith of Abigail recognizes in David, the king in Israel, his personal blamelessness, his zeal for Jehovah. She foresees his actual reign and the establishment of his house, with the destruction of all that would oppose itself. She prays to be remembered of him in that day. Nothing seems to indicate more than Jewish hopes.
The numerical division seems to be also in accordance with this, the number (4) being on the one hand that of testing and failure, while it is also that of the earth, and thus of the earthly people, Israel. Whatever the moral lessons, therefore, the typical application seems, after all, clear.
5. If the double marriage of David shadow the union of Israel with the Lord, then we have reached in it beyond the time of trial, and David’s sufferings would seem as if they should now end. But this they do not, although we do not find him in the same distress again. Still Saul once more pursues him, though now only to fall more openly into his hand, and to be braved and shamed in the very midst Of his people. We have, in fact, reached an end, and begin a new section with the twenty-sixth chapter, from which to the end of the thirty-first we have put before us, according to the Deuteronomic character of a fifth part, the results in divine government, this open shame and self-condemnation of Saul, with the corresponding justification of the man he persecutes, being but the first of these. The sojourn of David in the Philistines’ land, parallel with the full apostasy and judgment of Saul at the hand of the Philistines, claims, even as history, a new section for itself; and to this his last pursuit of David is clearly the preface. Even in his words to Saul he already speaks of being driven out from the inheritance of Jehovah among the worshipers of other gods, as it is immediately afterwards that his resolution to escape into the Philistines’ land is definitely announced; and this is the end of Saul’s pursuit of him.
The section as a whole is clearly retributive, and illustrative of the divine ways in government. Even Saul’s lapse into witchcraft is of this nature, and the end is so, beyond question. David, too, finds his discipline from God, though the end with him is tender mercy. As a direct type of Christ he does not appear in it, while even in his failure he may but too well typify those witnesses for Him upon earth with whom He identifies Himself ever, as in His words to a later Benjamite, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou ME?"
(1) David is hiding himself in the hill of Hachilah ("obscurity"?), and the Ziphites once more carry the news to the king. The sight of the messengers, with the memories connected, should have been enough to hinder Saul’s pursuit, but it does not; and this time, therefore, he is made to proclaim openly his own shame and David’s righteousness. The man he seeks seeks him in turn, and in the very midst of his camp has once again his life at his disposal; only again to spare it, however, while yet stripping him of his spear, the emblem of his sovereignty, and carrying off the pitcher of water at his head. What a realization for Saul of the vanity of the conflict in which he is engaged! -and what an anticipation of the time when the secrets of the heart, developed in and moulding the life, shall be exhibited in the light, -a light in which already he found himself thus revealed! One more attempt of divine mercy this to bring into subjection this human heart, but which, even while owning the folly which has possessed it, proves itself absolutely unreceptive of it, and thus unrepentant. Saul thus draws one step nearer to his doom, -when, indeed, unsceptred, and without water for his thirst, he must meet and give account to God! Alas, how can this be so forgotten?
For David, his righteousness is brought forth in the light, and proclaimed by his persistent enemy and accuser, in the ears of all the people. Fuller justification he could not get, with the spear and cruse also for a double witness on the other side. And God has wrought this, by means of the very persistency of the persecutor himself. How ought every fear to be now at rest when again He has manifested Himself after this manner!
(2) Again, however, after a signal triumph, and a wonderful display of God’s goodness to him, the faith of David collapses, and he sees nothing before him but one day perishing at the hand of Saul. He forms a resolution, therefore, in which certainly he is guided by no wisdom from God, and leaves the inheritance of the Lord for the land of their heathen enemy. He goes not even to Moab, but to Gath, the city of the giant he had overcome by faith, and where, also, he had once before, through unbelief; failed so pitiably: but from the higher height the deeper depth; and, once having given way to unbelief, one false step necessitates another, one lie another to confirm it; cruelty has to be added to deceit, many lives having to pay forfeit for the preservation of his own. How dastardly a thing is unbelief!
Details here may be difficult enough, while the moral lesson is unmistakable; and it is this which, in all this part, seems most to be emphasized. We may however, how a child of God away from God may be a very zealous destroyer of evils that are unquestionably such, -all the while remaining as far as ever away; nay, increased zeal against what is external to us often accompanies a state in which self-judgment is proportionately deficient.
David’s plea for himself we have already heard. He simply puts the blame of where he is upon others: "they have driven me out," he says; and he has no consciousness of aught but truth in saying it. Yet while it was true that they had fully the responsibility of this, it is not true that a saint of God, walking with God, can be "driven" to anything. To be led of God and to be driven of men are two different, contrasted, and, in this case, incompatible things. It was but a dishonor done to the Lord’s care and love to imagine the possibility of falling into Saul’s hand, and perishing without coming to the kingdom, when the divine anointing, was upon his head. Saul himself, in his moments of sanity, knew better. The fruits of this lapse of faith did not fail to declare sufficiently its character; and mark it out, not as the sin of others, but his own.
Ziklag, "the pressure of the wave," (p. 137, n.), becomes thus suitably his residence. Circumstances have, indeed, been too much for him: he, is not now an overcomer. Let him pursue but a little farther the road on which he has entered, and he shall be captain of the body-guard to a Philistine king forever!
(3) Meanwhile Saul, in terror of the gathering Philistines, and forsaken of God, sinks to the lowest, and consults one of those dealers with familiar spirits whom he had sought in time past to cut off out of the land. Disguised and under cover of the night, he steals with two others to the dwelling of the witch at Endor. Nor does he hesitate to swear by Jehovah Himself to protect her in the violation of Jehovah’s law. He bids her bring up to him Samuel; and to the woman’s own consternation Samuel in reality appears. This was beyond her art, and shows her plainly a higher power overmastering it: the "keys of hades" were in no witch’s hand; and while he appears alone to her, to her discomfiture, he speaks directly to Saul while he hides his face from him; and in brief judicial words announces his doom at hand. To-morrow would the Lord give Israel into the hand of the Philistines, and he and his three sons would be with him (in death). The kingdom torn from him would pass over to David, according to what had long since been pronounced,when he had openly disobeyed the divine word as to Amalek.
That the judgment of Amalek -that is, of the lusts of the flesh (Exo 17:1-16 n.) -is the test which that must abide which stands for true and divine government on earth, is so clear that there is no need to dwell very much upon it. Here "the powers that be" fail, and have failed from the beginning, although they are still a great mercy, and upheld of God as such. That with them also, as with Saul, much has come in upon the heels of this, there can be no right question either. The form and the extent of that opposition to Christ which has been manifested by them have varied with various times and various places, and will be judged of differently, according to individual standpoints, also. We have found such differences in the history of Saul himself, the precise application of which will be naturally correspondingly difficult. At the end Scripture distinctly shows that the kings of the earth will turn from God in a more direct and outward way, and seek to seducing spirits; Saul’s conduct here being only a hint, as it were, of the dread reality. This it would lead us too far to enter upon here: to those who are acquainted with the prophecies of the last days, however, it will be plain that Saul’s history will be in this respect more than re-enacted in that of the Gentile powers. That it is according to the principles of divine government that, turning away from God, men should fall of necessity into the power of Satan, is again plain, -plain as is the revival of demonism in many forms in our own days, and in that of necromancy especially, along with a decline of faith in the word of God too marked for any but the willingly blind to doubt. All this should make the close of Saul’s reign and life here exceedingly solemn for us.
(4) In the next chapter David, also, is seen once more in terrible failure. Actually starting out to accompany his leader to the war, the Philistine lords with keener instincts than the unsuspecting Achish, refuse point-blank such doubtful auxiliaries. Naturally enough they cannot believe that David is going to turn his back upon his whole history, nor doubt that he will take advantage of his opportunity to reconcile himself to his master with the heads of his allies. God has thus, in His mercy, opened to David a way of escape from the snare in which he has entangled himself; and with what fervent satisfaction might we expect to find him accepting it. How full of praise and thankfulness will he be for such a deliverance! Yet, alas, he is here nothing but a hypocrite. Israel are only the "enemies of my lord the king," against whom it is his right and privilege to fight: and he dares to appeal to his unspotted conduct while with Achish, knowing the absolute insincerity of it all! But such is the saint away from God, and so easy it is to become hardened through the deceitfulness of sin"! Should not our constant cry be, "Search me, O Lord, and try me!"?
(5) Thus man is fully shown for what he is. David, no more than Saul, can claim anything on the ground of personal righteousness: grace can be alone his confidence, as with any child of man. Thus as to all Israel the new throne established in Zion is a throne of grace, though it be true that grace has not the dimensions which attach to it with us: in this way it is but a type; and, indeed, a faint one.
But if grace is to be shown, it must be according to holiness; there could be none apart from this. And so the government of God must act now in chastening; David must be searched out thoroughly, and made to realize his condition. Accordingly, there is an irruption from the south: some of that very tribe upon which God had pronounced judgment, a judgment which Saul had been deposed for not rightly executing, make a raid upon Israelites and Philistines alike, burn Ziklag while deprived of its defenders, and carry away everything in it. When we know what Amalek means, we can easily understand, the soul having wandered from God, this irruption of Amalek: and even in this way to such the outbreak of the lusts of the flesh may be used of Him to startle and convict the conscience; and so for recovery in the end. Absent in the Philistine camp, and while parading his mock zeal against the people of God, David little knew that the hand of the destroyer was upon his most cherished possessions, that the Amalekites had already stripped him bare, and all that were with him. He and they return to find but the blackened remnants of their city, and wives, children, and all that belonged to them, swept away. More than this, he has to prove that when not walking with God, the tie between man and man also is loosened: his own devoted followers, stung with the misery into which his late course had brought them, murmur about inflicting on him death by stoning, -the judgment of an Achan, -and he is, indeed, "in a great strait."
But then it is, that out of its heavy stupor David’s soul awakes. Faith proves its power amid the wreck of nature. The very fact that the judgment is so manifestly of the Lord brings him back into the glorious Presence from which he has wandered, and it is -blessed be God -the old sweet familiar Presence. The surge of bitter distress has landed him in the haven of rest. The shadow has proved but the shadow of His wings; and David, humbled, and so purified, has become once more the master of his circumstances because of himself: "David encouraged himself in Jehovah his God."
Immediately Abiathar and the ephod are his resource: "and David inquired of Jehovah, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop?" Nature had, of course, decided this already; but the man of faith will not move at the bidding of nature. Faith questions when all seems plain; as it finds a plain road, also, amid all perplexities. "Shall I pursue after this troop? Shall I overtake them?" He recognizes now the judgment of God: he must humbly ask of the depths of the divine compassion, Is it irrevocable? And how prompt and tender is the answer: "Pursue! for thou shalt surely overtake, and without fail recover." Then at once he is a man of activity again, the energetic and courageous leader of men: by the time they have reached the brook Besor, one third of his little army are prostrate with the speed they make. They are but four hundred now, with the stamp of weakness upon them, therefore; and themselves, we may be sure, weary and way-worn; but the battle is to be Jehovah’s.
Now there is cast in the way an Egyptian, spent with hunger and thirst, whom they restore to life, and comfort with the assurance that he shall not be put back in bondage to the Amalekite, his master. A natural man brought anew to life at the brook of "good news" (Besor), and freed from the lusts of the flesh, which he has served, -this is the very one to guide the hand of judgment which falls now on the Amalekites. All is recovered out of their hand, as the divine oracle had promised; and with this they fall heirs to an immense booty besides: for in the goodness of God a mere recovery seems impossible. He brings us back to Himself with more than we had lost, -fruitful experiences and knowledge of God’s ways in government and in grace. All this is the law of restitution, according to God, -of the trespass-offering which Christ makes good to us.
So David and his four hundred return to the brook Besor. There those who were too exhausted to go over the brook had remained with the baggage. They come forth with joy to greet their victorious comrades; but here, untouched by the mercy they had experienced, there were those who refused to recognize their right to share the spoil. But the sense of grace is too strong to permit this.
(6) In contrast with David’s recovery and victory Saul perishes in Mount Gilboa, and Israel suffers a sore defeat. The Philistines take possession of the neighboring cities, and all is in complete collapse in the land. Three of the sons of Saul perish with him. There is now no anointed of the Lord but David. Typically it is the end of rule on earth as owned of God, and that in immediate anticipation of the true King, whose reign follows. Ishbosheth has no title, but is in distinct rebellion against the will of God, for all Israel knows that David is the true anointed: and thus will "man’s day" end upon earth, in open revolt "against the Lord, and against His Christ." (Psa 2:2.)
That Philistinism has sought persistently the subjection of the powers of the earth is familiar history. That it will accomplish their final ruin is not, perhaps, plainly prophesied. Yet the view of the woman Babylon, which is given us in Rev 17:1-18, shows her riding upon the "beast" of civil empire, as the eleventh verse seems clearly to show, in its last form. But this last form (under the eighth head) is that in which it becomes openly apostate, and "goes into perdition"; and the woman’s supremacy over it then, though not preserved to the end, (for it finally throws off the woman and destroys her, ver. 16,) would seem at least quite consistent with the view of its having brought the former character of rule to an end, or helped essentially to do so. But I leave this now for the consideration of those who have understanding in the word of prophecy: at another time it may demand a fuller notice.
The lesson in divine government here is obvious. The body, in its ghastly dishonor, fastened to the wall of Bethshan, -quiet, indeed, at the "house of quiet," -his armor in the house of their female deity, these things are the heathen satire upon such an end. Amid all this the prompt action of the men of Jabesh-Gilead is like the resurrection of a good deed from the mass of corruption. They save, however, but the bones for burial: the rest can only be given to the fire. Thus the hope of man in man comes to its end with Saul, -the "asked for," the people’s choice. All now depends on David; but here, also, how poor a dependence, except as God is pleased to work with and through this feeble instrument. The crown brought to Ziklag (the Philistine guerdon for feigned unfaithfulness to the crown itself) speaks more loudly than the defeat at Gilboa, of human instability and untrustworthiness. Even so the light of a brighter dawn could shine through David, -a glory far beyond his own. For all these things happened unto them for types."
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v1 1 Samuel
1 Samuel
THE SHEPHERD-KING
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1Sa 16:1 - 1Sa 16:13.
The chief purpose in these verses is to bring out that the choice of David was purely God’s. The most consummate art could have taken no better way of heightening the effect of his first appearance than that adopted in this perfectly unartificial story, which leads us up a long avenue to where the shepherd-boy stands. First, we have Samuel, with his regrets and objections; then Jesse with his seven stalwart sons; and at last, when expectation has been heightened by delay and by the minute previous details, the future king is disclosed,-a stripling with his ruddy locks glistening with the anointing oil, and his lovely eyes. We shall best catch the spirit by simply following the letter of the story.
I. We have Samuel and his errand to Bethlehem. After that sad day at Gilgal, he and Saul met no more, though their homes were but a few miles apart, and it must have been difficult to avoid each other. Samuel yearned over the man whom he had learned to love, and it must have been pain to him to see the shattering of the vessel which he had formed. However natural his mourning, and however indicative of his sweet nature, it was wrong, because it showed that he had not yet reconciled himself to God’s purpose, though his conduct obeyed. The mourning which submits while it weeps, and which interferes with no duty, is never rebuked by God. He never says,’ How long dost thou mourn?’ unless sorrow has deepened into accusation of His providence, or tears have blinded us to the duty that ensues. But the true cure for overmuch sorrow is work, and, for vain regrets after vanished good, the welcome to the new good which God ever sends to fill the empty place. His resources are not exhausted because one man has failed. ‘There are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.’ Saul has been rejected, but a king shall be found; and Samuel is to dry his tears and anoint him. He evidently had no thought of a successor to Saul till this command came; and when it comes, how little it tells him! He gets light enough for the next step, but no more. That is always God’s way. Duty opens by degrees, and the way to see farther ahead is to go as far as we see.
Samuel’s sorrow and the incomplete command show plainly that he was but an instrument. At every step the view is confuted which makes him a far-seeing statesman who inaugurated and carried through a peaceful revolution. The history, which is our only source, tells another story, and makes God the actor, and the prophet only a tool in His hands. If we cut the supernatural out of the story, the fragments do not hang together, and no reason is forthcoming why they should be any more true than are the rejected pieces. Samuel does not show to advantage in either of the two things mentioned about him here. In neither was he true to his early vow, ‘Speak, for Thy servant heareth.’ But there was much reason for his fear, if once God was left out of the account; for Saul’s ever-wakeful suspicion had become a disease, and it was not wonderful that he should be on the watch for any act which looked like putting the sentence of deposition into effect. If ever a man lived with a sword hanging by a hair over him, it was this unhappy king, who knew that he was dethroned, and did not know when or by whom the divine rejection would be made visible to all men. But Samuel had faced worse dangers without a murmur; and no doubt his alarm now, which makes him venture all but flatly to refuse to obey, indicates that, to some extent, he had lost his hold of God by his indulgence in his sorrow. If he had been true to his high calling, he would have ‘filled his horn,’ and gone on God’s errand, careless of a hundred Sauls or a hundred deaths. But it is easy for us, who have never perilled anything for obedience, to sit in judgment on him. ‘Wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself.’ God judges him mercifully, and provides a shelter for his weakness, which he should not have needed. To hide his true errand behind the cloak of the sacrifice was second-best, and only permitted in consideration of his fear which had a touch of sin in it. He was not, at the moment, up to treading the heroic plain path; and God opened an easier one for him. It is sometimes allowable to use an avowed purpose to conceal the real one, but it is a permission which should be very sparingly used.
II. We have Samuel at Bethlehem, with Jesse and his sons. An old man is suddenly seen coming up the hill to the gate of the little city on foot, driving or leading a heifer, and carrying a horn in his hand. In such humble fashion did the prophet travel; but reverential awe met him, and his long years of noble service surrounded him as with a halo. Apparently, Bethlehem had not been included in his usual circuits, and the village elders were somewhat scared by his sudden appearance. Their question may give a glimpse into the severity which Samuel sometimes had to show, and is a strange testimony to the reality of his power: ‘Comest thou peaceably?’ One old man was no very formidable assailant of a village, even if he did not come with friendly intent; but, if he is recognised as God’s messenger, his words are sharper than any two-edged sword, and his unarmed hand bears weapons mighty to ‘pull down strongholds.’ Why should the elders have thought that he came ‘with a rod’? Because they knew that they and their fellow-villagers deserved it. If men were not dimly conscious of sin, they would not be afraid of God’s messenger or of God.
The narrative does not tell whether or not the sacrifice preceded the review of Jesse’s sons. Probably it did, and the interval between it and the feast was occupied in the interview. It is evident that Samuel kept the reason of his wish to see Jesse’s sons to himself; for disclosure would have brought about the danger which he was so anxious to avoid. It appears, too, from 1Sa 16:13, that only the family of Jesse were present. So we have to fancy the wondering little cluster of burly husbandmen with their father surrounding the prophet, and: one by one, bracing themselves to meet his searching gaze. Again the choice is emphatically represented as God’s, by the mention of Samuel’s hasty conclusion, from the look of the eldest, that he was the man. Had not Samuel had enough of kings of towering stature? Strange that he should have been in such a hurry to fix on a second edition of Saul! The most obedient waiters on God sometimes outrun His intimations, and they always go wrong when they do. Samuel has to learn two lessons, as he is bidden to repress the too quick thought: one, that he is not choosing, but only registering God’s choice; and one, that the qualifications for God’s king are inward, not bodily. In these old days, the world’s monarchs had to be men of thews and sinews, for power rested on mere brute force: but God’s chosen had to rule, not by the strength of his own arm, but by leaning on God’s. The genius of the kingdom determined the principle of selection of its king. Samuel does not again attempt to forecast the choice; but he lets the other six pass, and, hearing no inward voice from God, tells Jesse, as it would seem, that the Lord has not chosen them for whatsoever mysterious purpose was in His mind.
III. We have ‘the Lord’s chosen.’ Samuel was staggered by the apparent failure of his errand. God had told him that he had provided a king from this family, and now they had passed in review before him, and none was chosen. Again he is made to feel his own impotence, and his question, ‘Are here all thy children?’ has a touch of bewilderment in it. God seldom shows us His choice at first; and both in thought and practice we get at the precious and the true by a process of exclusion, having often to reject ‘seven’ before we find in some all-but-forgotten ‘eighth’ that which we seek. David’s insignificance in Jesse’s eyes was such that his father would never have remembered his existence but for the question, and his answer is a kind of assurance to the prophet that he need not take the trouble to see the boy, for he will never do for whatever he may have in view. His youth and occupation put him out of the question. We know, from the other parts of his story, that his brothers had no love for him; nor does his father seem to have had much. Probably the lad had the usual lot of genius,-to grow up among uncongenial, commonplace people, understanding him little, and liking him less. It is a hard school; but where it does not sour, it makes strong men. His solitary shepherd life taught him many precious lessons, and, at any rate, gave him the priceless gift of solitude, which is the nurse of poetry, heroism, and religion. The glorious night-piece in Psa 8:1 - Psa 8:9, and its companion day-piece in Psa 19:1 - Psa 19:14, may bear the impress of the shepherd life; which is idealised and sanctified for ever in the immortal sweetness of Psa 23:1 - Psa 23:6 There were many worse schools for the future king than a solitary shepherd’s life on the bare hills round Bethlehem.
The delay of the feast and the pause of idle waiting heighten the expectation with which we look for David’s coming. When he does come, what a bright young figure is lovingly painted for us! He is ‘ruddy, and withal fair of eyes, and goodly to look upon,’-of fair complexion, with golden hair {rare among these swarthy Orientals}, and with lustrous poet’s eyes. What a contrast to Saul’s grim face and figure,- like a sunbeam streaming athwart a thunder-cloud seamed with its own lightning! Silently the divine voice spoke, and silently, as it would seem, Samuel poured the oil on the boy’s bowed curls. No word of the purpose escaped his lips, and the awestruck youth was left to wonder for what high destiny he was chosen. One can fancy the looks of his brothers as they bitterly watched the anointing with hearts full of envy, contempt, and rage. 1Sa 17:28 shows what they felt to David.
What was the use of this enigmatical anointing for an undisclosed purpose? It is Samuel’s last act, and his last appearance, except for the mention of David’s flight to him from the court of Saul, and that weird scene of Saul prophesying and lying naked before Samuel and David for a day and a night. It was therefore the solemn final act of the prophet,-transferring the monarchy; but it was for David the beginning of his training for the throne, in two ways, ‘The Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward.’ There was an actual communication of divine gifts fitting him for his unknown office, and he was conscious of a new spirit stirring in him. Beside this, the consciousness of a call to unknown tasks would mature him fast, and bring graver thoughts, humbler sense of weakness, and clinging trust in God who had laid the burden on him; and the necessity for repressing his dreams of the future, in order to do his obscure present duties, would add patience and self-control to his youthful ardour. What a whirl of thoughts he carried back to his flock, and how welcome would the solitude be!
The great lesson here is the one so continually reiterated in Scripture, from Isaac downwards, that God ‘chooses the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty,’ and thereby magnifies both the sovereign freedom of His choice and the power of His Spirit, which takes the stripling from the sheepcotes and qualifies him to be the antagonist of the grim Saul, and the king of Israel. There are subsidiary lessons, especially for young and ardent souls confined for the present to lowly tasks, and feeling some call to something higher in a dim future. Patience, the faithful doing of to-day’s trivial tasks, the habit of self-repression, the quiet trust in God who opens the way in due time,-these, and such like, were the signs that David was called to a throne, and that God’s Spirit was preparing him for it. They are the virtues which will best prepare us for whatever the future may have in store for us, and will be in themselves abundant reward, whether they draw after them a high position, which is a heavy burden, or, more happily, leave us in our sheltered obscurity.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 David is anointed King over Israel
David is anointed King over Israel
From 1 Samuel 16 on, the interest centres in David rather than in Saul.
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1. Oil] probably consecrated oil for anointing.
2. If Saul hear it] Saul's action, recorded in 1Sa_22:18-19, shows that Samuel's fears were far from baseless. Say, I am come to sacrifice] Samuel was not asked to prevaricate. God relieved him of his difficulty by giving him a definite command.
4. Beth-lehem] originally Ephrath (Gen_48:7), 5 m. S. of Jerusalem. Trembled] For Samuel had been wont to move from one town to another to punish offences (1Sa_7:16).
5. Sanctify yourselves] This was done by washing themselves and removing all ceremonial defilement. He sanctified Jesse and his sons] This gave Samuel an opportunity for private conversation.
6. Said] to himself, thought.
10. Again, Jesse made seven] RV simply, 'And Jesse made seven.' The sons already named are included in the seven.
11. We will not sit down] probably to the feast which followed the sacrifice: cp. 1 Samuel 9.
12. Ruddy] This colouring is much admired in the East where most are dark-skinned. Of a beautiful countenance] lit. 'fair of eyes.' In those hot countries bordering on the desert, multitudes are disfigured by ophthalmia, as was Leah (Gen_29:17 RV).
13. In the midst of his brethren] Probably they thought Samuel had anointed him as his follower, or to become in time a prophet like himself.
13, 14. The Spirit of the Lord came upon David.. departed from Saul] The special grace conferred by anointing passed from the rejected Saul to the new king: cp. 1Sa_10:6.
15. An evil spirit from God] apparently a gloomy, suspicious melancholy bordering on madness. To the Hebrew, every visitation, alike of good and evil, is directly from Jehovah: cp. 1Ki_22:22; Amo_3:6.
22. Stand before me] i.e. be one of my servants: cp. 1Ki_10:8.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 III. DAVID, THE KING AFTER GOD’S HEART--His EXILE AND…
III. DAVID, THE KING AFTER GOD’S HEART--His EXILE AND SUFFERING
1. David Anointed King and the Departure of the Spirit from Saul
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CHAPTER 16
1. David anointed king (1Sa 16:1-13)
2. The Spirit departs from Saul and David with Saul (1Sa 16:14-23)
The king after the people’s heart has failed and is set aside, and now Jehovah brings forth His king after His own heart. That king like Jonathan, a man of faith, is devoted to Jehovah and in perfect subjection unto Him. Furthermore, from the tribe of Judah (Judah means “praise”) he is a worshipper through whom the Spirit of God pours forth the sweetest strains of praise and worship. He prospers into a great kingdom and Jehovah makes an oathbound covenant with him (2 Sam. 7). That covenant points us to the true King, who according to the flesh is of the seed of David. Saul could not foreshadow that King. There is absolutely nothing in Saul which could remind us of the King who is yet to rule over this earth in righteousness. It is different with the life and reign of David. Everywhere we may discover most blessed types of our Lord Jesus Christ, the son of David. Because this king after God’s own heart is to give a typical vision of the coming true King, David had to pass through suffering first before he could receive the kingdom and its glory. From now on in this book we shall follow the sufferings of the king after God’s heart.
Samuel is interrupted in his mourning for Saul by a new command to fill his horn with oil for the anointing of another king. That king is to be chosen from the sons of Jesse the Bethlehemite. A sacrificial feast is appointed in connection with the approaching anointing of the son of Jesse, and Samuel is obedient and went to Bethlehem. Then he called Jesse and his sons to the feast. Then the seven sons of Jesse pass by, but the chosen one is not among them. Only one was left, the youngest who kept the sheep. He is brought in. “Now he was ruddy (literally, “reddish,” perhaps referring to auburn hair) and withal of a beautiful countenance and goodly to look upon; and the LORD said, Arise, anoint him, for this is he.” David the son of Jesse was anointed and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him. And so David became the Lord’s anointed. David means “beloved”; he is a shepherd, typifying the Beloved One, the good, the great and the chief Shepherd. What a contrast with Saul!
An evil spirit from the Lord began then to trouble Saul after the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him. What a sad spectacle he now presents! When he had been anointed, the Spirit also came upon him and he became another man. His pride, self-will, disobedience and stubbornness we have followed, and now the Spirit departs and in judgment upon the deposed King an evil spirit was permitted to come upon Saul. “Evil as well as good has its commission from God,--not its existence, but its liberty to act, and the limits of its action.” It was no doubt a case of demon possession. He had rejected the Word of God and was given over into the hands of a demon. Such is also the case in the days of apostasy which are now upon Christendom. They depart from the faith and follow seducing spirits and doctrines of demons. Doctrinal apostasy and the moral evils following such an apostasy is the work of demons. God still permits as an act of judgment that demons possess those who are disobedient and rebel against Him. Then David is called in to sing to the afflicted King and to soothe him. And he loved him greatly and David became his armour bearer. “And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.” Here we have a beautiful type of the Lord Jesus Christ. His sweet words, the ministrations of His Spirit refresh the soul and drive out the evil spirit. When the unhappy king had been quieted and the ministry of the young shepherd-king was no longer needed, he returned to his home and to his shepherd life; to feed his father’s sheep (1Sa 17:15).
No discrepancy exists between 1Sa 16:19-23 and the question which Saul subsequently asks: “Whose son is this youth?” (1Sa 17:55-58) The king had not been previously anxious to become intimately acquainted with the origin and family-connections of one who merely bore his arms and served as his harper, but when the latter is on the point of becoming his son-in-law, it is naturally a matter of interest to him to acquire a more accurate knowledge of the personal history of David.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 David Anointed by Samuel
David Anointed by Samuel
v. 1. And the Lord said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? Samuel had yielded to excessive grief over the condition of affairs, for his anxiety concerning the welfare of Israel and his worry over Saul’s hardness of heart had put him out of sympathy with God’s hidden ways; hence the reproof. Fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse, the Bethlehemite; for I have provided me a king among his sons, Jehovah had looked them over and chosen one of them.
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v. 2. And Samuel said, How can I go? If Saul hear it, he will kill me, since he would consider the act as treachery and revolt, believing himself still to be the rightful king of Israel. And the Lord said, Take an heifer with thee, and say, I am come to sacrifice to the Lord, for apparently it was nothing unusual for the prophet to hold divine services in various parts of Israel, especially now that Shiloh was desecrated.
v. 3. And call Jesse to the sacrifice, inviting him to take part in the sacrificial meal as his own special guest, and I will show thee what thou shalt do, give him immediate directions, reveal His will at the time; and thou shalt anoint unto Me him whom I name unto thee. This involved no falsehood, but its chief object was to conceal the main reason of Samuel’s coming from such as had no authority to know of it.
v. 4. And Samuel did that which the Lord spake, and came to Bethlehem. And the elders of the town trembled at his coming, and said, Comest thou peaceably? Samuel had evidently held visitations from time to time and earnestly rebuked any wrongs and evil conditions which he found.
v. 5. And he said, Peaceably, he had no special occasion to rebuke them; I am come to sacrifice unto the Lord; sanctify yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice, the celebration being intended to strengthen the people’s fellowship with Jehovah. And he sanctified Jesse and his sons, addressing this admonition to them in particular, so they would be sure to wash themselves and put on clean garments, and called them to the sacrifice, as his own special guests.
v. 6. And it came to pass, when they were come, that he looked on Eliab, the first-born, and, being impressed by his appearance and bearing, said, Surely the Lord’s anointed is before Him, this thought immediately arose in his heart.
v. 7. But the Lord said unto Samuel, giving an answer to his spirit, Look not on his countenance or on the height of his stature, on the fact that he was a handsome, stalwart young man; because I have refused him; for the Lord seeth not as man seeth, He has different standards of judgment; for man looketh on the outward appearance, judging from what he can see, but the Lord looketh on the heart, judging by the disposition of the soul, proving the heart and the reins. This is a general truth which applies to the relation of God to men at all times. God, knowing the inward thoughts of men, is unfailing in His judgment.
v. 8. Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel, for the purpose of careful inspection. And he said, Neither hath the Lord chosen this.
v. 9. Then Jesse made Shammah to pass by. And he said, Neither hath the Lord chosen this.
v. 10. Again, Jesse made seven of his sons to pass before Samuel, that is, a total of seven, including the three oldest. And Samuel said unto Jesse, The Lord hath not chosen these.
v. 11. And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children? And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the sheep. As the youngest he had to stand back and take charge of the chores, while his older brothers made ready to go to the sacrificial feast. And Samuel said unto Jesse, Send and fetch him; for we will not sit down, literally, "surround," namely, the table, to partake of the meal, till he come hither.
v. 12. And he sent and brought him in. Now, he was ruddy, said of the red color of his hair, which is unusual in the Orient, and withal of a beautiful countenance, with bright eyes and a clear look, and goodly to look to, handsome and stalwart of body as well. And the Lord said, announcing His decision to the thoughts of Samuel, Arise, anoint him; for this is he, chosen by the Lord in spite of his youth.
v. 13. Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brethren, they were witnesses of the solemn act; and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward, he received a special endowment with gifts and powers for his royal calling, so that he was gradually led forward to full development, to complete fitness for his life’s work. So Samuel rose up and went to Ramah, back to his home. It is probable that the significance of the ceremony was not made known to the other sons of Jesse, who may have been under the impression that David was simply to be regarded as a pupil of the great prophet. But the Lord’s will went forward in due time. It happens quite often that the Lord chooses men for His work who are without honor before men. But just such instruments He fills with His Spirit, making them fit to perform the work of their high calling.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13 How long will you mourn for Saul, since I…
How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel?
This rhetorical question is a rebuke from God and can be translated as a statement. AT: "Stop mourning that I rejected Saul from being king over Israel." (See: Rhetorical Question)
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Fill your horn with oil
The term "horn" was sometimes used to refer to a "flask" that was shaped like a horn and was used for holding water or oil. A flask of oil was used for anointing a king.
translationWords
Yahweh
Samuel
mourn
Saul (OT)
reject
king
Israel
horn
oil
Jesse
Bethlehem
son
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 13 16:1-23 David was Saul’s replacement. There are striking similarities…
16:1-23 David was Saul’s replacement. There are striking similarities between the two: Samuel anointed both. Neither was pursuing the position. Both were unlikely candidates (Saul was from the smallest tribe; David was the youngest son). Both were impressive in appearance (9:2; 16:12). And the Spirit came mightily on each when he was anointed king (10:10; 11:6; 16:13). The key difference was that David was “a man after [God’s] own heart” (13:14; cp. 16:7), while Saul was not.
16:1 mourned long enough: See study note on 15:35. • Bethlehem was about five miles south of Jerusalem. It was later known as the City of David (Luke 2:11) and the birthplace of Jesus. • Jesse was the grandson of Boaz and Ruth (Ruth 4:22). • I have selected: This Hebrew verb implies that God had seen one of [Jesse’s] sons and based his choice on what he saw. God, the eternal king, knows better than the people of Israel how to choose a good king to serve the nation, and he provided a replacement for Saul who would lead Israel well.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.