Then Samuel spake out of his sepulchre, and said, “Let his expiation be this: He shall go down, he and his sons, to the city of Giants, and they shall fall there.”
Saul had twelve sons. He called them to him and said to them all the words of Samuel. They then answered, “We are ready, let us go down.”
So they went to the city of Giants, and fought against it, and fell there, all in one day.[[619]]
XXXVII.
DAVID.
David says of himself, “Behold, I was shaken in wickedness; and in sin did my mother conceive me.”[[620]] The Rabbis explain this passage by narrating the circumstances of the conception of David, which I shall give in Latin. The mother of David they say was named Nitzeneth. “Dixerunt Rabbini nostri beatæ memoriæ, quod Isai (Jesse) habebat ancillam, eamque sollicitabat ad turpia; quæ, cum esset pudica et fidelis uxori Isai, eidem retulit; quæ seipsam aptavit (loco ancillæ) et congressa est cum Isai, ex quo concubitu egressus est David. Et quia Isai intentio fuerat in ancillam, quamquam res aliter evenerat, idcirco dixit David,—super eum sit pax: Ecce in iniquitate formatus sum, et peccato calefecit me mater mea.”[[621]]
On this account, Jesse, having discovered the deception, lightly esteemed his son David, and sent him to keep sheep, and made him as a servant to his brethren. And to this David refers when he says, “The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner;”[[622]] for, from being the despised brother, put to menial work, he was exalted before his brethren to be king over Israel.
When David was born he would have died immediately, had not Adam, when he saw his posterity marshalled before him, taken compassion on David, and given him seventy years.[[623]]
However, David was without a soul for the first fourteen years of his life, and was so regarded by God, as he was uncircumcised;[[624]] but other Rabbinic writers say that he was born circumcised.
The Jewish authors relate, as do the Mussulman historians, that David had red hair. In Jalkut (1 Sam. xvi. 12) it is said, “Samuel sent, and made David come before him, and he had red hair;”[[625]] and again in Bereschith Rabba, “When Samuel saw that David had red hair, he feared and said, He will shed blood as did Esau. But the ever-blessed God said, This man will shed it with unimpassioned eyes—this did not Esau. Esau slew out of his own caprice, but this man will execute those sentenced to death by the Sanhedrim.”
David was very small, but when Samuel poured the oil upon his head and anointed him, he grew rapidly, and was soon as tall as was Saul. And this the commentators conclude from the fact of Saul having put his armour upon David, and it fitted him. Now Saul was a head and shoulders taller than any man in Israel; therefore David must have started to equal height since his anointing.[[626]]