“To the heart subdued and lowly,
God His mighty grace shall bring.
Shiloh’s prophet—patient waiting—
But precedes Jehovah’s King.
Yea! His ways our hopes excel,
David follows Samuel.”
BETHLEHEM—city of David—how many memories circle around the name of the bright little town, which has more than once proved itself worthy of its name—the house of bread! The lovely story of Ruth the Moabitess, of Naomi, and “the mighty man of wealth,” is inseparably linked with it, for the mention of the cornfields of Bethlehem will ever remind us of the patient gleaner, whose faith led her to take shelter under the wings of the Lord God of Israel, and who as the wife of Boaz became the mother of Obed, the grandfather of the sweet psalmist of scripture, David, the well-beloved king of Israel. The name David signifies beloved. And he was beloved of God.
When first David comes before us in the scripture history we see him in the pasture lands of Bethlehem, feeding or keeping the sheep of his father—the shepherd lad of the family—yet he was to be the anointed king, chosen of Jehovah, and ancestor of that One who also was to be born at Bethlehem, of whom the angel herald proclaimed to other shepherds,” I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10, 1110And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. 11For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:10‑11)).
No wonder that the angel spoke of great joy when he proclaimed such tidings to “all people,” for no deeper gladness could be given than that which is bound up with the name of Jesus, now made Lord and Christ. Very few of the children of men would not be glad to have the abiding consciousness of forgiveness, and salvation, and eternal life; and all these blessed realities, and many more, are made good now to every soul who appropriates this glorious Savior, whose birth was announced that day to the shepherds in the fields of the city, of David.
It was a sad time in the history of the people of Israel when the young son of Jesse was feeding his father’s sheep in the fields around the “city of bread,” as the name Bethlehem means. The king whom, they had chosen had proved himself utterly unworthy of his exalted position, and from fear of his subjects he disobeyed the command of Jehovah, and was rejected by Him when all the attempts of the venerable prophet Samuel to lead him to repentance had failed.
So from his home at Ramah the aged Samuel now goes up to the little town, which lay on an elevated ridge of land about six miles from the place where the beautiful temple was afterward built by Solomon. Passing up the hill-sides, which were probably then, as now, terraced to the summit, so as to form a space for the fertile orchards of figs and pomegranates and vines, the house of Jesse was reached at last, and he and his sons are called to take part in the sacrifice which the prophet offers to Jehovah before anointing the future king. As the eldest son of the house appeared, and Samuel looked on his pleasing face and commanding stature, he thought that this must be the one whom he was to anoint; but the voice of Jehovah comes to him and says, “Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him.... for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.”
Then one after the other of the seven sons of Jesse are passed before the prophet, but not one of them is chosen, and he asks the father if all his sons are there; and in his reply we see how the youngest, and perhaps the least esteemed of the family, had been neglected or overlooked when they were called together. The aged father tells him that the youngest of all is not there, but is keeping the sheep, and to his surprise possibly, the prophet answers, “Send and fetch him: for we will not sit down till he come hither.” A messenger is sent in haste to the fields, where all unconscious of what was passing at home, the young shepherd was faithfully doing his work of caring for and feeding the flock.
Brought at once into the midst of the waiting company in the shepherd’s dress he wore in the fields, with the fresh, ruddy glow of health and youth upon his face, Samuel sees a lad of a beautiful countenance before him, and immediately the voice of Jehovah comes, “Arise, anoint him for this is he.” So the holy anointing oil is put upon the head of Jehovah’s chosen king in the midst of all his brethren, and he is anointed by the prophet also chosen of Jehovah as a special witness to Himself in the midst of Israel. As a little child in the tabernacle at Shiloh, Samuel had heard the voice of the Lord God calling him by name for the special place he was henceforth to fill; so we can understand that when the years of his long and faithful service were drawing to a close, and he was conscious that his work was well nigh done, it was a consolation to him, and a natural thing as it were, to be allowed to see and anoint the one who was now to be the link between the people of Israel and Israel’s God.
It was not enough for the future king that he should be thus chosen and set apart; for he would need peculiar power in the position in which he was placed, and this is at once conferred; for we read, “and the Spirit of Jehovah came upon David from that day forward.” Did the young shepherd understand the wonderful character of what thus took place in such simplicity in his quiet home at Bethlehem? We can hardly think any of those present, excepting Samuel, could fully do so, for Saul still reigned in his kingdom, and none but the prophet knew that not only was that willful king rejected of Jehovah, but also that the one chosen to succeed him was already appointed of God, and invested with divine power.
This did not mean that the youth who was “of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to,” was at once to be placed in the sight of the nation as God’s king; on the contrary, he has to return to the work of keeping his father’s sheep for a time, where he, who was to be the shepherd of Israel, had already proved his fitness to be so by the way he had met the many difficulties and trials of endurance of actual shepherd life in the hills and valleys near his home. Had David been a careless or cowardly keeper of his father’s sheep we can safely say he would never have been called to the royal throne of Judah and Israel; nor would he have been so had he not, even as a shepherd lad, met all the dangers and emergencies in a spirit of real dependence upon God. David realized his own weakness to face the lion and the bear, that lurked in their hiding- places near the fields where he kept the sheep, and this made him strong, for he leaned wholly upon God, who was his strength, and so was delivered from them and able to overcome them.
The family of Jesse, who saw the holy anointing oil put upon the head of David that day, could little have foreseen what a path of difficulty and danger and trial lay between him and the throne for which he was destined. The king who is to be strong for Jehovah must learn to be strong in faith, by passing through circumstances where that faith is tested and strengthened. The one who is to lead his people to know Jehovah better must learn himself what it is to know Him through finding every other fail.
“For David’s Psalms had ne’er been sung,
If grief his heart had never wrung.”
The greatest rulers are those who have best learned to obey, so David must learn obedience and dependence before he can “sway the royal scepter, or wear the royal crown,” and he must go back to the lonely pasture lands around Bethlehem till the moment comes when he is called of God to enter the courtly circle around the king, whom he was to serve before he succeeded him.
The calling of a shepherd in such a region as the lands around his home naturally fitted the young son of Jesse for the years of training he was to pass through. Situated as the city is on the highest level of the highlands of Judah, with deep valleys or wadies running down to the Dead Sea on one side, and to the land of the Philistines on the other, he would have ever to be on his guard against the wild beasts of the deep ravines, and also against Bedouin robbers from the east, and daring foes from Philistia, who were always on the alert to pillage the flocks of the Israelites.
So it was probably in defense of the lambs and sheep of the flock that David became so expert in the use of the sling, and in braving every sort of danger, enduring fatigue and privation, and heat and cold, those strong, fearless elements in his character were called out and trained, which afterward so fitted him to become the warrior king of his country, and the faithful dependent servant of Jehovah. That he never forgot his shepherd life we see plainly, in the beautiful psalms he was inspired by the Spirit of God to write. Wherever the scriptures are read and valued, there, too, his wonderful Psalm 23 is loved, and known by heart generally. How well we can imagine that on some quiet sunny day of early summer, when there was a little time of rest as the flock was lying around him, the young shepherd first wrote, “Jehovah is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.”
Then, too, the sense of having been set apart for some special service to the God of Israel might have found expression in his words: “Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”
How long David remained keeping the sheep after he had been anointed by Samuel we do not know, but there was evidently no effort made either by his father or himself to leave the simplicity of his ordinary life. He was just going quietly on doing his duty, leaving everything to the God whom he had learned to confide and rest in. So it came about quite simply and naturally, that when the king whom Jehovah had rejected was troubled by an evil spirit of sadness and dread, his servants advise him to have a skilful musician brought to play before him, hoping that the sweet strains of the harp, of which the Israelites were so fond, might dispel the gloom that clouded their master’s life.
The king agrees to this, and commands them to find a man that can play well and bring him to the court. We could hardly have expected that a shepherd would be the one out of all Judah chosen for this delicate service, but we find one of Saul’s servants telling him that he has seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is a skillful player on the harp, and also a valiant and prudent man, and fitted by his pleasing appearance to stand before the king. At once a message is conveyed to Bethlehem, asking Jesse to send David his son to the king, and he replies in the courteous eastern fashion by taking an ass and lading it with a kid and bread and a bottle, or skin, of wine, probably made from their own vineyard, and sending all to the monarch by the hand of his youngest son.
With all the beauty of fresh young health and strength, and better still, with the beaming, happy countenance of a young man finding his rest and joy and strength in God, the God of Israel, David appeared for the first time before the unhappy king, who is at once attracted by him and makes him his armor-bearer, and we are told that he loved him greatly. Thus did the shepherd lad become an attendant at the court of Saul, and his skillful use of the harp often soothed the king, for God so ordered it that when the evil spirit troubled him and David took his harp and played before him, Saul was refreshed and made well and the evil spirit departed from him. For the time relief was permitted to the man whose willful rebellion against God had caused him to be set aside, for not until he had wholly cast off all true fear of the Jehovah of Israel do we read that “the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul.”
It was probably for a short time only that David now remained with Saul, and we can but feel that it would be with a deep sense of relief he-once more found himself on the way to his native city, and passing up the white limestone road leading through the groves of olives and pomegranates, once again entered his own peaceful home, far from the royal dwelling with its constant alarms from the Philistine foes, who were always on the watch to harass and oppress the Israelites.
Obedient to the call of the king when he was needed, he returned to his father as soon as his services are no longer called for; and the very memory of his short stay at the court as the shepherd minstrel boy quickly faded from the monarch’s mind. To David himself the time spent with Saul must have been a strange revelation of the utter departure from Jehovah, and the consequent misery and weakness of the kingly power. Yet it is beautiful to find how the young son of Jesse looked at Saul as the anointed ruler of the people of Jehovah, and thus one to be served and obeyed with the most loving and loyal allegiance; and this even when relentlessly persecuted and hated by him.
A few months, or perhaps years, now passed quietly over the home at Bethlehem, where, learning more of what the God of Israel was to the one who trusted in Him, David only heard rumors at first of the invasion of the land by the dreaded foes from Philistia. In the peaceful path of homely every-day duty he goes on strong in his own simple confidence in God, which he may possibly have first learned from his grandfather Obed, or even from Ruth herself, for he often repeats the lovely expression of Boaz when welcoming her as a gleaner to his fields, and turning it into prayer he says, “Hide me under the shadow of Thy wings” (Psa. 17:88Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings, (Psalm 17:8)). Several times in his psalms we find the same words, and they had been possibly heard by him very often when as a little child the story of Ruth the Moabitess, afterward the honored wife of Boaz, was told to him.
He would hear of the tender devotion of the mother of Obed—his grandfather—to the aged Naomi, and the comfort she found in the kindness of Boaz, who owned her faith when he said to her, “The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.” So in the midst of preparations for war that were all around him David could rest in his sure and calm confidence in God, which was wrought in him by the Holy Spirit, and when others were trembling for fear he could say to Him whose servant he was, “My soul trusteth in Thee: yea, in the shadow of Thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast” (Psa. 57:11<<To the chief Musician, Al-taschith, Michtam of David, when he fled from Saul in the cave.>> Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast. (Psalm 57:1)).