A Shepherd is Anointed King
1“The LORD said to Samuel, ”How long will you grieve over 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 for myself a king among his sons.”
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.”
12 And he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome. And the Lord said, “Arise, anoint him, for this is he.” 13 Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.
1 Samuel 16:1,6–7,12–13 Read More
Well, Samuel isn’t done yet. Even though he passed on rule of Israel to a king, God still hears Samuel and Samuel is still listening to God. Samuel went through real period of mourning. Remember, when he was a kid, God told him that He was going to do something in Israel that had never been done. That thing was to give Israel a king, and that king came through Samuel. After all they had been through together, Samuel had to accept that God had rejected Saul as much as Saul would have to accept it.
Look at how this anointing is different than the one before. Saul was out looking for lost donkeys, but David is out keeping sheep from being lost. Saul’s father didn’t know where he was and was worried about him. David’s father knew exactly where to find David faithfully doing his job. Saul’s anointing as king was made known almost immediately. David’s anointing would be known only to his family and Samuel, until it became obvious later.
God, is of course, not following any kind of formula. He can pick and choose a king or a pauper from whatever stock He wishes. Samuel, a much older man now than when he anointed Saul, thinks he knows what a king looks like when he sees one. God tells him that even with his years of experience, he has more to learn. God has been looking at the heart of David and knows king material when He sees it.
Gene Edwards tells this story better than anyone ever will, so I’m going fill this space with his take on it from “A Tale of Three Kings.”
A figure in the distance was running toward him. It grew and became his brother. “Run!” cried the brother. “Run with all your strength. I’ll watch the flock.”“Why?”“An old man, a sage. He wants to meet all eight of the sons of Jesse, and he has seen all but you.”“But why?”“Run!”
So David ran. He stopped long enough to get his breath. Then, sweat pouring down his sunburned cheeks, his red face matching his red curly hair, he walked into his father’s house, his eyes recording everything in sight.
The youngest son of Jesse stood there, tall and strong, but more in the eyes of the curious old gentleman than to anyone else in the room. Kith and kin cannot always tell when a man is grown, even when looking straight at him. The elderly man saw. And something more he saw. In a way he himself did not understand, the old man knew what God knew.
God had taken a house-to-house survey of the whole kingdom in search of someone very special. As a result of this survey, the Lord God Almighty had found that this leather-lunged troubadour loved his Lord with a purer heart than anyone else on all the sacred soil of Israel.
“Kneel,” said the bearded one with the long, gray hair. Almost regally, for one who had never been in that particular position, David knelt and then felt oil pouring down on his head. Somewhere, in one of the closets of his mind labeled “childhood information,” he found a thought: This is what men do to designate royalty! Samuel is making me a … what?
The Hebrew words were unmistakable. Even children knew them:
Behold, the Lord’s anointed!
From a Tale of Three Kings: A study in brokenness, by Gene Edwards
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