The life of David is naturally divided into epochs, of which we may
avail ourselves for the more ready arrangement of our material. These
are--his early years up to his escape from the court of Saul, his exile,
the prosperous beginning of his reign, his sin and penitence, his flight
before Absalom's rebellion, and the darkened end.
We have but faint incidental traces of his life up to his anointing by
Samuel, with which the narrative in the historical books opens. But
perhaps the fact that the story begins with that consecration to office,
is of more value than the missing biography of his childhood could have
been. It teaches us the point of view from which Scripture regards its
greatest names--as nothing, except in so far as they are God's
instruments. Hence its carelessness, notwithstanding that so much of it
is history, of all that merely illustrates the personal character of
its heroes. Hence, too, the clearness with which, notwithstanding that
indifference, the living men are set before us--the image cut with half
a dozen strokes of the chisel.
We do not know the age of David when Samuel appeared in the little
village with the horn of sacred oil in his hand. The only approximation
to it is furnished by the fact, that he was thirty at the beginning of
his reign. (2 Sam. v. 4.) If we take into account that his exile must
have lasted for a very considerable period (one portion of it, his
second flight to the Philistines, was sixteen months, 1 Sam. xxvii.
7),--that the previous residence at the court of Saul must have been
long enough to give time for his gradual rise to popularity, and
thereafter for the gradual development of the king's insane
hatred,--that further back still there was an indefinite period, between
the fight with Goliath, and the first visit as a minstrel-physician to
the palace, which was spent at Bethlehem, and that that visit itself
cannot have been very brief, since in its course he became very dear and
familiar to Saul,--it will not seem that all these events could be
crowded into less than some twelve or fifteen years, or that he could
have been more than a lad of some sixteen years of age when Samuel's
hand smoothed the sacred oil on his clustering curls.
How life had gone with him till then, we can easily gather from the
narrative of Scripture. His father's household seems to have been one in
which modest frugality ruled. There is no trace of Jesse having
servants; his youngest child does menial work; the present which he
sends to his king when David goes to court was simple, and such as a man
in humble life would give--an ass load of bread, one skin of wine, and
one kid--his flocks were small--"a few sheep." It would appear as if
prosperity had not smiled on the family since the days of Jesse's
grandfather, Boaz, that "mighty man of wealth." David's place in the
household does not seem to have been a happy one. His father scarcely
reckoned him amongst his sons, and answers Samuel's question, if the
seven burly husbandmen whom he has seen are all his children, with a
trace of contempt as he remembers that there is another, "and, behold,
he keepeth the sheep." Of his mother we hear but once, and that
incidentally, for a moment, long after. His brothers had no love for
him, and do not appear to have shared either his heart or his fortunes.
The boy evidently had the usual fate of souls like his, to grow up in
uncongenial circumstances, little understood and less sympathised with
by the common-place people round them, and thrown back therefore all the
more decisively upon themselves. The process sours and spoils some, but
it is the making of more--and where, as in this case, the nature is
thrown back upon God, and not on its own morbid operation, strength
comes from repression, and sweetness from endurance. He may have
received some instruction in one of Samuel's schools for the prophets,
but we are left in entire ignorance of what outward helps to unfold
itself were given to his budding life.
Whatever others he had, no doubt those which are emphasized in the Bible
story were the chief, namely, his occupation and the many gifts which it
brought to him. The limbs, "like hinds' feet," the sinewy arms which
"broke a bow of steel," the precision with which he used the sling, the
agility which "leaped over a rampart," the health that glowed in his
"ruddy" face, were the least of his obligations to the breezy uplands,
where he kept his father's sheep. His early life taught him courage,
when he "smote the lion" and laid hold by his ugly muzzle of the bear
that "rose against him," rearing itself upright for the fatal hug.
Solitude and familiarity with nature helped to nurture the poetical side
of his character, and to strengthen that meditative habit which blends
so strangely with his impetuous activity, and which for the most part
kept tumults and toils from invading his central soul. They threw him
back on God who peopled the solitude and spoke in all nature. Besides
this, he acquired in the sheepcote lessons which he practised on the
throne, that rule means service, and that the shepherd of men holds his
office in order that he may protect and guide. And in the lowly
associations of his humble home, he learned the life of the people,
their simple joys, their unconspicuous toils, their unnoticed sorrows--a
priceless piece of knowledge both for the poet and for the king.
A breach in all the tranquil habits of this modest life was made by
Samuel's astonishing errand. The story is told with wonderful
picturesqueness and dramatic force. The minute account of the successive
rejections of his brothers, Samuel's question and Jesse's answer, and
then the pause of idle waiting till the messenger goes and returns,
heighten the expectation with which we look for his appearance. And then
what a sweet young face is lovingly painted for us! "He was ruddy, and
withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to" (1 Sam. xvi.
12)--of fair complexion, with golden hair, which is rare among these
swarthy, black-locked easterns, with lovely eyes (for that is the
meaning of the words which the English Bible renders "of a beautiful
countenance"), large and liquid as become a poet. So he stood before the
old prophet, and with swelling heart and reverent awe received the holy
chrism. In silence, as it would seem, Samuel anointed him. Whether the
secret of his high destiny was imparted to him then, or left to be
disclosed in future years, is not told. But at all events, whether with
full understanding of what was before him or no, he must have been
conscious of a call that would carry him far away from the pastures and
olive yards of the little hamlet and of a new Spirit stirring in him
from that day forward.
This sudden change in all the outlook of his life must have given new
materials for thought when he went back to his humble task.
Responsibility, or the prospect of it, makes lads into men very quickly.
Graver meditations, humbler consciousness of weakness, a firmer trust in
God who had laid the burden upon him, would do in days the work of
years. And the necessity for bidding back the visions of the future in
order to do faithfully the obscure duties of the present, would add
self-control and patience, not usually the graces of youth. How swiftly
he matured is singularly shown in the next recorded incident--his
summons to the court of Saul, by the character of him drawn by the
courtier who recommends him to the king. He speaks of David in words
more suitable to a man of established renown than to a stripling. He is
minstrel and warrior, "cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man,"
and "skilled in speech (already eloquent), and fair in form, and the
Lord is with him." (1 Sam. xvi. 18.) So quickly had the new
circumstances and the energy of the Spirit of God, like tropical
sunshine, ripened his soul.
That first visit to the court was but an episode in his life, however
helpful to his growth it may have been. It would give him the knowledge
of new scenes, widen his experience, and prepare him for the future. But
it cannot have been of very long duration. Possibly his harp lost its
power over Saul's gloomy spirit, when he had become familiar with its
notes. For whatever reason, he returned to his father's house, and
gladly exchanged the favour at court, which might have seemed to a
merely ambitious man the first step towards fulfilling the prophecy of
Samuel's anointing, for the freedom of the pastoral solitudes about
Bethlehem. There he remained, living to outward seeming as in the quiet
days before these two great earthquakes in his life, but with deeper
thoughts and new power, with broader experience, and a wider horizon,
until the hour when he was finally wrenched from his seclusion, and
flung into the whirlpool of his public career.
There are none of David's psalms which can be with any certainty
referred to this first period of his life; but it has left deep traces
on many of them. The allusions to natural scenery and the frequent
references to varying aspects of the shepherd's life are specimens of
these. One characteristic of the poetic temperament is the faithful
remembrance and cherishing of early days. How fondly he recalled them is
shown in that most pathetic incident of his longing, as a weary exile,
for one draught of water from the well at Bethlehem--where in the dear
old times he had so often led his flocks.
But though we cannot say confidently that we have any psalms prior to
his first exile, there are several which, whatever their date may be,
are echoes of his thoughts in these first days. This is especially the
case in regard to the group which describe varying aspects of
nature--viz., Psalms xix., viii., xxix. They are unlike his later psalms
in the almost entire absence of personal references, or of any trace of
pressing cares, or of signs of a varied experience of human life. In
their self-forgetful contemplation of nature, in their silence about
sorrow, in their tranquil beauty, they resemble the youthful works of
many a poet whose later verse throbs with quivering consciousness of
life's agonies, or wrestles strongly with life's problems. They may not
unnaturally be regarded as the outpouring of a young heart at leisure
from itself, and from pain, far from men and very near God. The fresh
mountain air of Bethlehem blows through them, and the dew of life's
quiet morning is on them. The early experience supplied their materials,
whatever was the date of their composition; and in them we can see what
his inward life was in these budding years. The gaze of child-like
wonder and awe upon the blazing brightness of the noonday, and on the
mighty heaven with all its stars, the deep voice with which all creation
spoke of God, the great thoughts of the dignity of man (thoughts ever
welcome to lofty youthful souls), the gleaming of an inward light
brighter than all suns, the consciousness of mysteries of weakness which
may become miracles of sin in one's own heart, the assurance of close
relation to God as His anointed and His servant, the cry for help and
guidance--all this is what we should expect David to have thought and
felt as he wandered among the hills, alone with God; and this is what
these psalms give us.
Common to them all is the peculiar manner of looking upon nature, so
uniform in David's psalms, so unlike more modern descriptive poetry. He
can smite out a picture in a phrase, but he does not care to paint
landscapes. He feels the deep analogies between man and his
dwelling-place, but he does not care to lend to nature a shadowy life,
the reflection of our own. Creation is to him neither a subject for
poetical description, nor for scientific examination. It is nothing but
the garment of God, the apocalypse of the heavenly. And common to them
all is also the swift transition from the outward facts which reveal
God, to the spiritual world, where His presence is, if it were possible,
yet more needful, and His operations yet mightier. And common to them
all is a certain rush of full thought and joyous power, which is again a
characteristic of youthful work, and is unlike the elegiac tenderness
and pathos of David's later hymns.
The nineteenth Psalm paints for us the glory of the heavens by day, as
the eighth by night. The former gathers up the impressions of many a
fresh morning when the solitary shepherd-boy watched the sun rising over
the mountains of Moab, which close the eastern view from the hills above
Bethlehem. The sacred silence of dawn, the deeper hush of night, have
voice for his ear. "No speech! and no words! unheard is their voice."
But yet, "in all the earth goeth forth their line,[B] and in the end of
the habitable world their sayings." The heavens and the firmament, the
linked chorus of day and night, are heralds of God's glory, with silent
speech, heard in all lands, an unremitting voice. And as he looks, there
leaps into the eastern heavens, not with the long twilight of northern
lands, the sudden splendour, the sun radiant as a bridegroom from the
bridal chamber, like some athlete impatient for the course. How the joy
of morning and its new vigour throb in the words! And then he watches
the strong runner climbing the heavens till the fierce heat beats down
into the deep cleft of the Jordan, and all the treeless southern hills,
as they slope towards the desert, lie bare and blazing beneath the
beams.
[B] Their boundary, _i.e._, their territory, or the region through which
their witness extends. Others render "their chord," or sound (LXX.
Ewald, etc.)
The sudden transition from the revelation of God in nature to His voice
in the law, has seemed to many critics unaccountable, except on the
supposition that this psalm is made up of two fragments, put together by
a later compiler; and some of them have even gone so far as to maintain
that "the feeling which saw God revealed in the law did not arise till
the time of Josiah."[C] But such a hypothesis is not required to explain
either the sudden transition or the difference in style and rhythm
between the two parts of the psalm, which unquestionably exists. The
turn from the outer world to the better light of God's word, is most
natural; the abruptness of it is artistic and impressive; the difference
of style and measure gives emphasis to the contrast. There is also an
obvious connection between the two parts, inasmuch as the law is
described by epithets, which in part hint at its being a brighter sun,
enlightening the eyes.
[C] "Psalms chronologically arranged"--following Ewald.
The Word which declares the will of the Lord is better than the heavens
which tell His glory. The abundance of synonyms for that word show how
familiar to his thoughts it was. To him it is "the law," "the
testimonies" by which God witnesses of Himself and of man: "the
statutes," the fixed settled ordinances; that which teaches "the fear of
God," the "judgments" or utterances of His mind on human conduct. They
are "perfect, firm, right, clean, pure,"--like that spotless
sun--"eternal, true." "They quicken, make wise, enlighten," even as the
light of the lower world. His heart prizes them "more than gold," of
which in his simple life he knew so little; more than "the honey," which
he had often seen dropping from "the comb" in the pastures of the
wilderness.
And then the twofold contemplation rises into the loftier region of
prayer. He feels that there are dark depths in his soul, gloomier pits
than any into which the noontide sun shines. He speaks as one who is
conscious of dormant evils, which life has not yet evolved, and his
prayer is more directed towards the future than the past, and is thus
very unlike the tone of the later psalms, that wail out penitence and
plead for pardon. "Errors," or weaknesses,--"faults" unknown to
himself,--"high-handed sins,"[D]--such is the climax of the evils from
which he prays for deliverance. He knows himself "Thy servant" (2 Sam.
vii. 5, 8; Psa. lxxviii. 70)--an epithet which may refer to his
consecration to God's work by Samuel's anointing. He needs not only a
God who sets His glory in the heavens, nor even one whose will is made
known, but one who will touch his spirit,--not merely a Maker, but a
pardoning God; and his faith reaches its highest point as his song
closes with the sacred name of the covenant Jehovah, repeated for the
seventh time, and invoked in one final aspiration of a trustful heart,
as "my Rock, and my Redeemer."
[D] The form of the word would make "reckless men" a more natural
translation; but probably the context requires a third, more aggravated
sort of sin.
The eighth psalm is a companion picture, a night-piece, which, like the
former, speaks of many an hour of lonely brooding below the heavens,
whether its composition fall within this early period or no. The
prophetic and doctrinal value of the psalms is not our main subject in
the present volume, so that we have to touch but very lightly on this
grand hymn. What does it show us of the singer? We see him, like other
shepherds on the same hills, long after "keeping watch over his flocks
by night," and overwhelmed by all the magnificence of an eastern sky,
with its lambent lights. So bright, so changeless, so far,--how great
they are, how small the boy that gazes up so wistfully. Are they gods,
as all but his own nation believed? No,--"the work of Thy fingers,"
"which Thou hast ordained." The consciousness of God as their Maker
delivers from the temptation of confounding bigness with greatness, and
wakes into new energy that awful sense of personality which towers above
all the stars. He is a babe and suckling--is that a trace of the early
composition of the psalm?--still he knows that out of his lips, already
beginning to break into song, and out of the lips of his fellows, God
perfects praise. There speaks the sweet singer of Israel, prizing as the
greatest of God's gifts his growing faculty, and counting his God-given
words as nobler than the voice of "night unto night." God's fingers made
these, but God's own breath is in him. God ordained them, but God visits
him. The description of man's dignity and dominion indicates how
familiar David was with the story in Genesis. It may perhaps also,
besides all the large prophetic truths which it contains, have some
special reference to his own earlier experience. It is at least worth
noting that he speaks of the dignity of man as kingly, like that which
was dawning on himself, and that the picture has no shadows either of
sorrow or of sin,--a fact which may point to his younger days, when
lofty thoughts of the greatness of the soul are ever natural and when in
his case the afflictions and crimes that make their presence felt in
all his later works had not fallen upon him. Perhaps, too, it may not be
altogether fanciful to suppose that we may see the shepherd-boy
surrounded by his flocks, and the wild creatures that prowled about the
fold, and the birds asleep in their coverts beneath the moonlight, in
his enumeration of the subjects of his first and happiest kingdom, where
he ruled far away from men and sorrow, seeing God everywhere, and
learning to perfect praise from his youthful lips.