David’s is a remarkable story. Though we begin to follow him only from the time Samuel anoints him as king Saul’s successor, his lineage is highlighted from the time Boaz marries Ruth. And Matthew traces it right back to Abraham. So if we are running away with the limited view that God pulled him out of the sheep-cote to become king of Israel, then that doesn’t do justice to God’s eternal plan and purpose which in fact goes beyond David to Jesus, snaking its way through human history for 42 generations! Talk about the Ancient of Days!
We do not know a great deal about David’s childhood except for the fact that his father’s name was Jesse, an elder in the town of Bethlehem and that he had seven older brothers all of whom served in the army of king Saul. His mother gets a mention only much later in David’s life but her name is not given anywhere.
He seems to have had some basic education going by his authoring of psalms and he certainly received some training in handling weapons. Though he knocked off Goliath with the first pebble from his bag, we see that he is able to handle the giant’s sword. And from his narration to king Saul about his exploits as a shepherd boy, we know that he was pretty deft in hand-to-hand combat as well.
From the later accounts of his being appointed the court musician tasked with soothing down Saul’s evil spirit-inspired intemperate behaviour, we learn that David could strum a harp sweetly and possibly sing as well. We don’t know how, but David seems pretty well grounded in the truths concerning Jehovah; this comes to light when he was being interviewed by Saul before taking on Goliath as well as from his adrenaline pumping cry as he ran toward Goliath, sling in hand.
Thus we see two sides of David: One, his God fearing, scripture reading, praying, meditating, lyric writing, harp strumming, sheep guarding, singing side and the other, calisthenics practicing, body building, combat training, wild beast killing, weapons handling macho side. It is interesting that both these ordinarily mutually exclusive personalities seem to be perfectly married in David. Quite a character!
This is the guy chosen by God to be king over Israel; and as we observed earlier on, it was no happenstance. Yet, it seems as though Samuel almost missed the bus as the Lord did not nod for any of the seven sons of Jesse presented to him at the sacrifice. Samuel himself seems to have been tested in this process as he simply did not know if Jesse had any more offspring left. Yes, God, having given the command, does not make it easy for his servants to follow through. This is where the faith quotient is called into play. And the last act of this sacrifice rigmarole seems to be completely unscripted as David is hurriedly fetched from the pastures and olive oil is poured on him, before he could say, what ho!!
And there is no record of David’s demeanour during this absolutely unexpected turn of events. From what we know he doesn’t seem to have been overwhelmed at being anointed King, though only a shepherd boy. There is no mention of his being overawed by the grandeur of the occasion underlined by the extraordinary visit of the seer Samuel to this small village of Bethlehem. Nor is there any hint of David protesting that there were seven brothers older to him with military training, and that he ranks pretty low in the pecking order. He simply seems to have accepted this anointing as a matter of course.Whether he had any premonition, we don’t know. Whether he knew his place in God’s eternal plan of salvation through someone far down in his family – extremely doubtful. All we know is he made no fuss whatsoever and quietly submitted to God’s will being revealed through his servant Samuel. At this time David was about 17 years old.
Soon after he enters the king’s palace, but only as an armour bearer to Saul and a court musician tasked with the job of playing soothing music to calm down the King whenever en evil spirit sent by God tormented him. It is not clear how long David was thus employed; he seems to have returned to his village after some years. We deduce this from the fact that when Goliath appears on the scene, Jesse calls David from the sheep cote to go and inquire about the welfare of his elder brothers in the army. That is when David saw Goliath and heard his war cry. The fact that the shepherd wasn’t overawed by the giant was soon reported to the king and David found himself in Saul’s presence once again. We don’t know how long it was since David left Saul’s employ but strangely there is no mention of previous acquaintance by either man.
The story of David felling Goliath is all too well rehearsed from Sunday School to bear repetition. But we may just note the unshakable confidence with which the stripling lad approaches the man-of-war in the name of the Lord Almighty, with just a staff and sling and a sling bag with five smooth pebbles, after discarding the king’s coat of mail. It is only as he watches David go out to fight the Philistine does Saul embark on a background check of the young man and learns all over again that he is the son of Jesse of Bethlehem. A little befuddling, but there it is!
One can start a debate at the necessity of five pebbles when one was enough to do the job with such superb confidence as David had in the Lord. Could we say that David was making allowance just in case he was presuming the plan of God in the matter. Perhaps the Lord will test out his faith quotient by allowing him to fail a few times before He takes a decisive hand in the duel. We can have different views but God honoured David’s faith in an unmistakable way. Bronze helmet, bronze coat of mail, bronze leg armour – nothing was of any avail for Goliath in the event. Before he could lift his bronze javelin and before his armour bearer could essay the trajectory of the pebbly missile, Goliath was stunned by the stone sinking in his forehead and fell head long. If you had blinked at that time, you probably missed the brief encounter and would have had to depend on slo-mo television replays to catch the moment!
Once their champion was gone, the Philistines were easily routed by the Israelites with their new found valour. King Saul interviews (was he suffering from Amnesia?) David, Saul’s son Jonathan and David fall in love with each other (relax, there is nothing gay about it), Saul makes David commander of his army and things go swimmingly until Saul hears the women singing while they danced saying “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.” Now Saul may have cowered before Goliath unlike David, but he didn’t like to hear it publicly announced – that too by a posse of dancing women; come on, he had his pride!
This kind of marked a tipping point in Saul’s relationship with David; the man began to fear David and sought every opportunity to finish him off. The Lord’s favour shifted from Saul to David; and even though Saul demoted David to a lesser command, David did his job faithfully and was rewarded with success after success. I guess somebody reminded Saul of his promise to give his daughter in marriage to the guy who fights off Goliath. Saul goes about this process with a murderous intention, plays around with his daughters until he learns that one of them, Michal was head over heals in love with David. David also seems to have liked the idea, despite an obligatory protest, and doubly fulfills a sinister dowry demand.
Then follows a prolonged period of a cat and mouse game. Among the interesting side stories this time is the rather amazing incident of David acting mad in front of king Achish of Gath – certainly one of the low points in his life; Goliath seems to have been a distant memory! Though there is no question God protected David even through all this charade, one does wonder if that indeed was God’s perfect will for David.
It appears David’s family – parents and brothers -too did not feel safe in Saul’s regime. They joined him in the cave of Adullam. David also became the leader for about 400 (the number grew to 600 eventually) disgruntled men, fellows running away from civil society for a variety of reasons. Even when he was hunted, David took care of his parents, at one time asking the king of Moab to provide them safe shelter. Hmm….talk about one’s responsibility towards one’s parents.
While scurrying from Saul, David inadvertently caused the death of 85 priests, their families and even their cattle (1 Samuel 22:18-19). King Saul ordered the killing for the sole reason that their leader Ahimelech had been kind to David; Ahimelech’s protestations that he did it in good faith for the king’s son-in-law, fell on deaf ears. It became an obsession with Saul to ferret out David from wherever he was hiding and the village folk became informers to gain the king’s favour.
Even kings have to visit the rest room from time to time and so it was that Saul took a bio-break at En-gedi while hunting for David. Had David been the vengeful type, this would have been the last call of nature for Saul! His life would have ended on a commode! It was easy enough for David to finish off Saul whilst the latter was intent on his business ( 1 Samuel 24:3). Indeed David was able to approach Saul undetected and cut off a piece of his robe! But David spared Saul’s life as he “would not attack the Lord’s anointed”. It was on this occasion that David cried out to Saul, “Against whom has the king of Israel come out? Who are you pursuing? A dead dog? A flea?”. That David refrained from laying his hand on the King inspite of strong suggestions from his own men that God had delivered Saul into his hands was a remarkably noble act on the part of David. That wasn’t the only occasion David showed such extraordinary consideration.
David had a roving eye and married whomsover he took a fancy for. At this stage in his life, he already had three wives – Michal daughter of Saul, Ahinoam from Jezreel and Abigail, Nabal’s widow from Carmel. But apparently Michal was not living with him, having been given away to another man. Later, David again goes back to king Achish of Gath for refuge; we do not know if this is the same Achish in front of whom David had put on a mad man act in an earlier occasion, or his son. During this time, David and his men stayed in Ziklag and were merrily deceiving Achish as to the victims of their periodic military exploits.
The Philistine army then assembled against the Israelites; David and his men who brought up the rear were duly rejected by the Philistine commanders who recalled his victories for Israel in earlier times. This resulted in David and his men returning to Ziglag only to find the town ransacked by the Amalekites, women and children gone.
David and his men were terribly upset; his men began to revolt against him and even talked of stoning him. It is at this point of time that we find one of the profoundest verses in the Bible;”but David encouraged himself in the Lord” (1 Sam. 30:6). Herein was a stupendous spiritual challenge. There was no vision of angels coming down and speaking words of succor. No voice from heaven boosting his sagging morale. The external circumstances remained the same; there was no change in the mood of his men around him. Everything remained hostile. “The sky overhead was like bronze and the ground beneath like iron”. David closed his eyes and cast the anchor of his faith way down his soul and found strength in the Lord. He dug a little deeper in the known and experienced facts of God’s great love. There followed a great military victory over the Amalekites; David won back everybody and everything. Complete restoration plus a bonus of booty!
The Philistines attacked Israel again and sadly Saul and Jonathan die in battle. The way is finally clear for David to ascend the throne, a full 15 years after he was anointed by Samuel. During this time he was close to death many times as he himself said to Jonathan once (“There is but a step between me and death” 1 Sam. 20:3).
You might almost think that the reaction of David and his men to the news of Saul’s death is a bit of a put on (“David and his men tore their clothes in sorrow….They mourned and wept and fasted” 2 Sam. 1:11) but we must remember that David was always conscious of Saul’s status as the anointed king of Israel. Moreover, his close friend Jonathan too perished in the battle and the army of Israel was routed.
Then there is the somewhat sad footnote of the young Amalekite who brought the news of Saul’s death being slayed at David’s command. Here, David definitely is definitely being needlessly overzealous. After all, you cannot expect an Amalekite to have the same sentiment about “anointing by God” as David; the young man who came running with the hope by being patted on the back by David was summarily executed! Not the best way to reward someone who (thought he) brought happy tidings in my view, but the kings and military commanders of yore, were often merciless and didn’t hesitate to kill on the flimsiest premise.
After this terrible act, David seamlessly shifts to his poet persona and composes a moving threnody known as the “Song of the Bow” for Saul and Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:19-27). Saul was dead, Jonathan and many of his brothers were dead and the throne must have been a ‘shoo-in’ for David. But it is remarkable that David, as the anointed one who has been waiting for 15 long years, was in no hurry to claim the kingdom. Typical of him, he asks the Lord (2 Sam. 2:1) and moves to Hebron only to become the king of Judah. By the time he becomes the king of all Israel, there was a long war with those loyal to Saul wherein the military commanders Joab and Abner played leading roles; Abner ultimately perished by the hand of Joab who was bent on wreaking vengeance for the blood of his brother Asahel.
It appears David was somewhat chary of his military commander Joab’s growing influence and his propensity to act autonomously. In his heart of hearts, he had rather hoped that somehow Abner will gain ascendance and supplant Joab. So when the news of Abner’s murder reached his ears, David took it hard. He tore his clothes, walked behind the hearse and wept at the graveside; he even composed an elegy for Abner.
There is another side story here that shows how small David can be at times. In the space of 4 verses -between the 2nd and the 5th verse – no fewer than 6 wives are named! Yet David goes after Michal, making her a pawn in the negotiations with Abner for the kingdom, and pulls her away from Palti, her disconsolate new husband.
Being a man of war, slaying people was second nature to David as stated before. The turncoats Recab and Baanah present him with the head of Ishbosheth, one of Saul’s sons, who was bolstered up by Abner briefly as the king of Israel; they stood waiting for a reward, and down came the sword on them.
Then we see the spectacle of David being anointed king of Israel by the tribes of Israel. He sought to make Jerusalem his capital, but the Jebusites balked and even taunted him saying that even the blind and the lame would repel him. It is at this point that we see another remarkable statement that almost leaps out of the text “nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion” (2 Sam. 5:7). With a compelling sense of the Lord’s endorsement of his endeavour, David proceeded to crush the Jebusites and made them eat their words. “Nevertheless” indeed!
(David’s story to be continued) ____________________________________________