March 26 / I Samuel 16-17; Psalm 23

I Samuel 16; Psalm 23; I Samuel 17

David, the man after God’s own heart (I Sam. 13:14; Acts 13:22), the shepherd king, the sweet psalmist of Israel (II Sam. 23:1), the giant killer. This is the man we meet today.

I expect that we all have at least a passing familiarity with David. He is hard to miss. After all “David and Goliath” is now a cliché for any conflict featuring some (usually “good”) underdog up against some much larger (and usually “evil”) opponent. And who has not heard Psalm 23? It’s quoted in movies. It’s common at funerals. It is probably the best known of all the Psalms. It is, properly, very familiar.

The danger for us in such familiarity is that we grow lazy. We think we know the stories. We think we know the characters. We think we know all there is to know, so we sit back and relax and don’t look anymore. But do we really know what we think we know? How much of what we “know” is actually biblical? And how much is Hollywood? Or how much of our understanding is shaped by what we learned from a children’s storybook, which — while probably well-intentioned — fictionalized the story, making Goliath the size of a skyscraper or David a child? Our so-called “knowledge” may thus be wildly mistaken and far from the truth. So as we read what is “familiar” we need to pay that much closer attention in order to separate fact from fiction.

So I challenge you to go back and read today’s passages one more time. Slowly. Chew on them. Notice what you notice. Do you see anything new, something you may not have noticed before? Does anything strike you as different from what you have always thought? Are you reminded of something that you may have once known, but that has faded from your memory? You may well come away not seeing anything particularly new, which is fine. Regardless, I invite you to share whatever you see — whether thoroughly familiar or surprisingly fresh — with the rest of us.

As for me, here are a few points that stand out fresh to me:

• I Sam. 16:2 — Samuel fears for his life, that Saul would kill him for anointing someone else (which says a lot about Saul).
• I Sam. 16:4-5 — The elders of Bethlehem are present when Samuel anoints David. It is not just David’s family. (Nevertheless, the anointing of David is much less public than the proclamation of Saul as king in I Sam. 10:17-24.)
• I Sam. 16:13 — After anointing David, Samuel immediately leaves (apparently, at least), giving no real explanation of his actions and no instructions for David.
• I Sam. 16:14 — A harmful spirit from the LORD tormented Saul. We can try to explain that statement away as an ill-worded explanation for mental illness, or we can accept what the Word of God actually says (as uncomfortable as that might be) and then wrestle with that truth.
• I Sam. 17:54 — Jerusalem? Huh? As far as I can tell, Jerusalem is not in the immediate neighborhood, and it is still owned and occupied by the Jebusites. So does this mean that David actually keeps Goliath’s head as a trophy for a very long time, until he eventually captures Jerusalem? (That sounds pretty nasty to me…) Is there some other explanation?

So, how about you? What strikes you this time around?