DAVID, KING OF ISRAEL[3]
By Margaret E. Sangster
(1074-1001 B.C.)
More than a thousand years before the beginning of the Christian era, in a little farmstead in Palestine, there was rejoicing at the birth of a son. Not the first-born, whose coming was a fit occasion for gifts and feasting, not the second, the third, nor even the seventh. David was the eighth son of Jesse the Bethlehemite. Jesse would seem to have been a landholder, as his fathers had been before him, a man of substance, with fields and flocks and herds. We first meet David, a ruddy, fair-haired lad, tough of sinew and keen of eye and aim, keeping the sheep among the mountains.
Two hundred years before David's day, a fair woman of Moab had brought a new infusion of strength, a new type, into the princely line of Judah. The blood of the daring children of the wilderness flowed in the veins of those who descended from Boaz. Just as in modern times and in royal houses a single feature, as a set of the jaw, a curve of the lips, a fulness of the brow or the eye, is stamped upon a race by some marriage of its heir with a strong woman of another race, so, it has always seemed to me, that the poetry, the romance, the fire and the passion, came with Ruth of Moab into the household of Boaz. For they were strong and beautiful, these sons of Jesse, who had Ruth as their not remote ancestress, and the mother-qualities live long and tell through many generations.
Of Jesse's many sons, David was the youngest. His early life was spent as was that of other boys belonging to his class and period. He must have added to his natural abilities and quickness, rare talents for attaining such knowledge as was possible, knowledge of all woodcraft and of nature, knowledge of musical instruments, and acquaintance with arms. Clean of limb and sure of foot, ready of repartee, fearless and alert, he was, even as a boy, something of what he was to become in maturity, one of the greatest men of his own or any age. Unique in some capacities, versatile and varied in arts and accomplishments, at once vindictive and forgiving, impetuous and politic, shrewd and impulsive, heroic and mean, of long memory for wrongs committed, of decisive act and incisive speech, relentless and magnanimous, strong and weak. A man whose influence has never died out among men, and who is to-day a vital force in the world of religion, of philanthropy, and of letters.
The short and ill-starred reign of Saul, the first king of the Jews, chosen when the people had wearied of the theocratic style of government, came to a speedy end. While yet the crown was on his head, the favor of the Lord departed from Saul, and Samuel, the Lord's prophet, was sent, 1064 B.C., to anoint his successor. The monarch was virtually deposed, though still in power. Saul was like a man under sentence of death who is still ignorant of his coming fate, and Samuel, who entertained a strong regard for him, evidently cared little to carry out the command received from God to discover the new king. Almost under protest, the old prophet sought Jesse the Bethlehemite, great-grandson of Boaz and the beautiful Ruth, and father of the sturdy set of stalwart sons who passed in review before him.
The youngest of these, a lad herding sheep in the fields, ruddy and goodly to look upon, bearing in his eyes the fearlessness of her who left her father's house to follow Naomi's desolate fortunes, came from the fields when he was sent for. Peaceful as was his shepherd's life in general, it was not without its occasional spice of danger, as when a lion and a bear, famished and furious and ravening for their prey, came out of the wintry woods to devour the sheep. Then, as the sacred chronicler tersely and with Homeric brevity tells us, the shepherd "slew both the lion and the bear."