Moving On Up. Long before he was a king, David was just a boy tending sheep in the fields outside Bethlehem, the youngest of eight brothers. When the prophet Samuel came to anoint the next king of Israel, Jesse, father of eight sons, didn't bother calling David in from the pasture. He paraded his seven strong, accomplished sons before the prophet instead. Out in the fields, David preferred a harp to a sword, more free-spirited artist than warrior, the last person anyone would picture leading men into battle. But Samuel rejected all seven brothers, one by one. Then David walked in, and God said to Samuel, "Arise, anoint him, for this is he."
More Than Meets the Eye. It's a strange choice, on paper. But Jewish tradition insists it wasn't strange at all, it was the point. A classic case of not judging a book by its cover, David was chosen because of the substance underneath: a heart purer than any other.
The rabbis teach that David embodied something rare and extraordinary, a man fully alive in every dimension. When he sat with Torah, he made himself soft as a worm. When he went out to war, he made himself hard and strong as a tree (Talmud, Moed Katan 16b). He wrote psalms that carried an entire nation through its darkest moments, and he led armies that secured a legacy, establishing Jerusalem as a capital that still stands today. He was king, scholar, musician, warrior, and poet, a true polymath, the Original Renaissance Man.
The Once and Future King. Jewish tradition doesn't just remember David as a great man. It remembers him as the man through whose lineage the Messiah will come. Of all the families, tribes, and generations that ever walked the earth, God chose his bloodline to carry forward the promise of "Olam Haba" ("World to Come"). That is no small thing.
Breaking Bad. And yet, David was no marble saint. He made grave mistakes, moments where ego and desire got the better of him, and he paid for them dearly. Jewish tradition doesn't hide from this, it holds both truths at once. David's greatness was never about being flawless. It was about a heart that kept turning back toward God, even after it had wandered. Maybe that's the real comfort in his story: perfection was never the price of admission.
What does God's favor look like? Scripture seems to be telling us: it looks like David. A man who strove for greatness in anything he pursued, with a purpose of glorifying God's name. As it is said in the Book of Samuel, "he was a man after God's own heart." The warrior who wept. The king who danced. The soldier who sang. A true archetype of human greatness, and an example we can all aspire to.
Go Deeper
A nice history on the life of King David from Aish.com.
A well-produced and concise telling of his story:
The following is a very enlightening shiur, or lesson, from the great Rabbi Simon Jacobson on how to apply the lessons of King David in our own lives. Not very long, worth a watch:
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