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From: 1 Samuel 16:1-13

David is Anointed

[1b] The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, seeing 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 for myself a king among his
sons.” [2] And Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me.” And
the LORD said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the
LORD.’ [3] And invite Jesse to the sacrifice and I will show you what you shall do
and you shall anoint for me him whom I name to you” [4] Samuel did what the
LORD commanded and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet
him trembling, and said, ‘Do you come peaceably?” [5] And he said, ‘Peaceably,
I have come to sacrifice to the LORD, consecrate yourselves, and come with me
to the sacrifice.” And he consecrated Jesse and his sons, and invited them to
the sacrifice.

[6] When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed
is before him.” [7] But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance
or on the height of his stature because I have rejected him; for the Lord sees not
as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the
heart.” [8] Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. And
he said, “Neither has the LORD chosen this one.” [9] Then Jesse made Sham-
mah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the LORD chosen this one.” [10] And
Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse,
“The Lord has not chosen these.” [11] And Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your
sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is
keeping the sheep.”And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and fetch him; for we will
not sit down till he comes here.” [12] And he sent, and brought him in. Now he
was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. And the Lord said, “A-
rise, anoint him; for this is he.” [13] Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anoin-
ted him in the midst of his brothers; and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily
upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.

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Commentary:

16:1-31:13. This, the last section of 1 Samuel, begins with an account of the
gradual decline of Saul until his eventual death in the battle of Gilboa against the
Philistines (chap. 31); it also deals with the tortuous and sometimes slow rise to
power of the new king, David. Strictly speaking, this section should also take in
the final chapter of 2 Samuel. From a literary point of view we can see that the
text is very much in the style of a court chronicle focusing only on episodes in
which the kings play the leading role. Many of the events covered here are re-
peated twice—for example, David’s entry into Saul’s service (16:14-23; 18:1-2),
Saul’s attempt on David’s life (18:10-11; 19:9-10), Saul’s promise to give David
his daughter’s hand in marriage (18:17-19; 18:20-27), Jonathan’s pleading on Da-
vid’s behalf (19:1-7; 20:25-34), David’s flight (19:10-18; 20:1-21) and the opportu-
nity he gets to take Saul’s life (24:7-8; 26:11-12). All this goes to show that the
editor has used material from a variety of sources and not made any great effort
to merge them properly.

In the episodes recounted here there are few religious references, whereas the
tensions between Saul and David are exposed in all their starkness; in fact, even
though these chapters deal with the most famous of kings, David, and stress
God’s special love for him, no effort is made to gloss over his failings and trans-
gressions (contrary to what happens in 1 and 2 Chronicles). David comes across
as a shrewd politician, capable of allying himself with the eternal enemies of his
people, the Philistines, in order to save himself (chap. 27); as a usurper of Saul’s
throne (chaps. 19 and 21); as a man of strong passions capable of slaughter on
a grand scale (21:12; 22:17) and other human weaknesses (18:17-27; 25:32-44),
yet capable, too, of great loyalty to the Lord’s anointed king (chaps. 24-26) and
to his own friends (chap. 20).

So, these accounts expose the most human side of the personalities involved,
but they also allow us to see that the Lord God of Israel is the main protagonist
even though he is in the background — mainly because it is he who chooses Da-
vid and stays with him, from the first moment that he enters the picture (16:1)
and through all the crises of his career: witness the constant refrain “the Lord is
with him” (16:18; 18:14, 28). Saul, David and the rest of the players in this histo-
ry are not guided by a blind destiny: they are all playing their part in God’s plan
of salvation. The great lesson contained in these accounts is that the Lord does
not normally intervene by way of miracles or amazing actions; he guides the
course of history through lights and shadows until he attains his key objective
— to make himself known to all mankind and lead it to salvation. The other great
lesson is that this salvific history steadily advances, amidst ups and downs —
acts of heroism, human weaknesses—until it reaches its fully developed stage
in Jesus Christ.

16:1-13. Samuel’s anointing of David, in a private, familial setting, is reminiscent
of Saul’s anointing, which was also done in secret (cf. 10:1-16). The narrative em-
phasizes that David does not in any way merit his election: he is a nobody, from
a family of no importance: no genealogy is provided, apart from the name of Jes-
se, his father (v. 5); he is the youngest of his brothers (vv. 11-12) and, like the
rest of his family, he works as a shepherd: he doesn’t come from a noble or mi-
litary or priestly family. He could have no claim to be anointed king.

God’s gratuitous choice of this shepherd boy gives deep, religious meaning to
his reception by Saul (16:14-23) and by the people, when he later kills Goliath
(17:55-18:5). David’s qualities and feats would not have been enough to advance
him, had not God first singled him out. David is a type of those who in the Chris-
tian dispensation are called to offices in the Church: what matters is not back-
ground, personal qualities or material resources but the realization that one is
called by God. Also, one needs to bear in mind that “man looks on the outward
appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (v. 7); from this derives the require-
ment to live and act in keeping with the call one is given. “For by his power to
know himself in the depths of his being he rises above the whole universe of
mere objects. When he is drawn to think about his real self, he turns to those
deep recesses of his being where God who probes the heart awaits him, and
where he himself decides his own destiny in the sight of God” (Vatican II,
“Gaudium Et Spes”, 14).

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.