Saul was a born soldier, and he had a soldier’s eye for detecting those who could best serve him in war. He added to his bodyguard all who were distinguished by strength or courage, and the border warfare with the Philistines kept them in constant employment. Among the young recruits was David, the youngest of the eight sons of Jesse, a Jew of Beth-lehem. Two different accounts have been preserved of the way in which David was first introduced to the king. It is difficult to reconcile them; the compiler of the books of Samuel was content to set them side by side without attempting to do so, while the Septuagint translators have cut the Gordian knot by omitting large portions of one of them. The difficulty is increased by the fact that the second account makes David the conqueror of Goliath of Gath, who elsewhere (2 Sam. xxi. 19) is said to have been slain during David’s reign by El-hanan the Beth-lehemite.[[432]]
According to this second story, the Philistines had invaded Judah and pitched their camp on a mountain-slope between Socoh and Azekah. Saul was encamped on the hill opposite, and between the two armies was the valley of Elah at the bottom of which was the dry bed of a mountain stream. The three elder brothers of David were in the Hebrew army, David himself having been left at home to look after his father’s sheep. From time to time, however, he was sent with loaves of home-made bread to his brothers and a present of milk-cheeses to ‘the captain of their thousand.’ On one of these occasions a Philistine giant, Goliath by name, came forth from the camp of the enemy to challenge the Israelites to single combat. He had done so day by day, but none of Saul’s followers had ventured to accept the challenge. For Goliath of Gath was a descendant of the ancient Anakim, and of gigantic stature. His height, it was said, was six cubits and a span, or nearly ten feet,[[433]] and the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, while its head weighed six hundred shekels of iron. Like the Greeks, he wore not only a bronze helmet and coat of mail, but also greaves on his legs; a bronze shield was hung between his shoulders and a broad-sword at his side.
David offered to accept the challenge of the uncircumcised giant, and in spite of his brothers’ ridicule his words were repeated to Saul. As a shepherd he had already proved his strength and daring by slaying both a lion and a bear; he was now ready to face the Philistine and redeem the honour of Israel. At first the Israelitish king insisted that he should be armed, and he was accordingly equipped in the usual Hebrew fashion with helmet, cuirass, and sword. But the young shepherd felt restricted and awkward in these unaccustomed accoutrements; nor did he know how to manage the sword. He therefore stripped them from him, and boldly approached the Philistine champion with his shepherd’s sling and five ‘smooth stones.’ These he knew how to wield, and with such effect that one of the stones penetrated the forehead of the Philistine, who fell dead to the ground. Then his conqueror dissevered his head with his own sword, while the Israelites shouted and pursued the panic-stricken enemy to the gates of Ekron.[[434]] Saul had inquired in vain through Abner, the commander-in-chief of the army, whose son the young champion of Israel was; and it was not until David had presented himself before the king, with the head of the Philistine in his hand, that he learned from his own lips that he was the son of his ‘servant Jesse the Beth-lehemite.’
David’s fortune was made; Saul at once incorporated him in his bodyguard, and a warm friendship began between him and Jonathan, a friendship that ceased only with Jonathan’s death. David was fresh and handsome, with a charm of manner and a ready tact which won the hearts of those he was with. It was not long, therefore, before he became first the favourite, then the general, and eventually the son-in-law of the Israelitish king.
The other account of David’s introduction to Saul brings Samuel once more upon the stage. The ‘neighbour’ better than Saul proves to be David, whom Samuel is accordingly sent to Beth-lehem to anoint secretly. He goes there under the pretence of wishing to offer a sacrifice, to which he invites Jesse and his sons. The elders of the city receive him with fear and trembling, and ask if he has come in peace. He is known to be the enemy of the king, and his arrival in a city of Judah bodes nothing good. The sons of Jesse are passed in review before him; none of them, however, is approved, and the seer asks if there is still no other. Thereupon Jesse tells him that there is yet the youngest, who is in the fields tending the sheep. Samuel bids him be sent for, and in spite of his terror of Saul and the secrecy of his mission, anoints the youth ‘in the midst of his brethren.’ Then the spirit of Yahveh comes upon David, and an evil spirit from Yahveh takes possession of Saul. Saul still reigns, indeed, but the mystic power conferred by the consecration, which had given him the right to do so, has henceforth passed to another.
The ‘evil spirit’ shows itself in fits of moody depression, which at times become insanity. Saul’s mind, always excitable, loses its balance; he is oppressed by a settled melancholy, which is now and again broken by outbursts of ungovernable rage. His servants determine that the evil spirit can be charmed away only by music, and one of them recommends David, the Beth-lehemite shepherd, who is not only a valiant ‘man of war,’ but also a skilful player upon the harp. David is hereupon summoned to the court, where his harping cures the king, who makes him his armour-bearer.
Such are the two narratives of David’s introduction to Saul. It is plain that they exclude one another. The king’s handsome armour-bearer, who soothes his mind and banishes his melancholy by music, cannot be the shepherd-lad who brings the loaves of home-made bread to his brothers, and whose very name and parentage are unknown to Saul and Abner. And yet there are points in each narrative which seem to be historical. It is true that in a later passage the death of Goliath is ascribed to a certain El-hanan; but the passage is corrupt, and though the Chronicler must have had an equally corrupt text before him,[[435]] it is possible he may be right in making the Philistine slain by El-hanan the brother of Goliath. At all events, the fact that the sword of the giant of Gath was preserved at Nob and was there handed over to David on his flight from Saul, shows that the death of Goliath must have happened while Saul was reigning and that David had been the hero of the deed. The priest expressly says that it was ‘the sword of Goliath the Philistine whom thou slewest in the valley of Elah.’ On the other hand, David was famous as a musician, and was even said to have invented instruments of music (Am. vi. 5), while Saul’s fits of depression were also historical; and the description given of David’s appearance (1 Sam. xvi. 12) is that of one who had seen him. Perhaps the harp-playing before the king followed David’s enrolment in Saul’s bodyguard, and was one of the means whereby he gained the heart of his royal master.
Are we to accept the anointing by Samuel as a historical incident, or are the modern critics right in asserting that the story is an invention, the object of which was to claim for the founder of the Judæan monarchy the same consecration at the hands of the great Hebrew seer as that which had been bestowed upon Saul? That David was actually anointed by a messenger of Yahveh admits of little doubt. Apart from Psalm lxxxix. 20, the date of which is questionable, and which may refer to the coronation in Hebron, it is clear from incidental notices in the historical books of the Old Testament that such consecration by a prophet or seer was felt to be a necessary prelude to the usurpation of a throne. It was thus that both Jehu and Hazael were incited to seize the crowns of Samaria and Damascus.[[436]] The use of oil in religious ritual went back to the days when Babylonian culture was predominant in Western Asia, and the religious texts of Babylonia contain many references to it. That the prophet was anointed for his office, we know from the history of Elisha.
On the other hand, it is difficult to conceive that David’s brother would have treated him with the contempt to which he gave utterance in the valley of Elah (1 Sam. xvii. 28) had he really been a witness to his consecration as king, and David’s future friendship with Jonathan, the heir-apparent to the throne, would have been more than hypocritical. Possibly the period of the consecration has been transferred from a time when David had become the son-in-law of Saul and the friend and guest of Samuel (1 Sam. xix. 18-22) to an earlier time in David’s life to which it is inappropriate.[[437]]
Abner, the cousin of Saul, remained the commander-in-chief of the Israelitish army, the Turtannu or Tartan, as the Assyrians would have called him. David, however, was made a general—‘the captain of a thousand’ was the exact title. The desultory war with the Philistines still continued, and the new general soon justified his appointment. But his successes and his popularity with the army aroused the jealousy of the king. Saul began to plot against his life and to hope that he might fall in one of the skirmishes with the enemy. Merab, Saul’s elder daughter, had been promised to him in marriage, but she was given to another, and though her younger sister Michal was offered in her place, Saul stipulated that David should bring him instead of a dowry a hundred foreskins of the Philistines. It was the Egyptian mode of counting the slain, which is still practised in Abyssinia; when Meneptah II. defeated the Libyans and their northern allies, the number of the enemy who had fallen was determined partly by the hands, partly by the foreskins cut off from the slain. The hundred foreskins demanded by Saul were doubled by David, who thereupon received Michal as his wife.