1 Samuel 16-20

We continue to chapter 16 to 20. In this chapter it describes the Lord rejecting king Saul and choosing David as the successor. It describes the battle between David and Goliath. It lastly describes king Saul’s hatred of David and attempts at his life.

Bible Passage:  1 Samuel 16-20

I find chapter 16 rather interesting. Samuel was tasked to anoint the future king and was told to find Jesse as the future king will be one of his sons. Jesse then showed him his sons and Samuel’s reaction was to choose the ‘tallest and strongest’ man.

“But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

Samuel committed a fault like all of us do. We tend to look at the outward appearance. We like things because they look nice or look beautiful first before we actually see what is the true essence or meaning of it; sometimes we may even be deceived by the outer appearance. Contrary, the Lord looks as the heart. He selects the youngest (David) in the family of Jesse to be king of Israel. He chose David because he has the heart and faith in God. We often beautify our outside but fail to beautify our inside Beautifying the inside could be cleansing our hearts to be more holy, to be more righteous, to be more loving, to be more obedient, to seek after the Lord and to be more forgiving.

In chapter 17, it describes the heroic battle between David and Goliath. Some people may doubt that David actually defeated Goliath. In everything, there seems to be always skeptics. However, as Christians we believe in this story. It is through God’s hand that David was able to defeat the mighty Goliath with only one stone. David used a sling and in the past the sling is known to be a poor man’s weapon. According to Wikipedia, the sling actually has superior range than an arrow and actually can be quite formidable if used by a skilled practitioner. A modern sling kind of weapon is the sling shot. It is different in that it uses an elastic band that is secured to a ‘Y’ shape bar. The ‘effective’ range of such a weapon was about 25m according to books which is much less than a real sling… however, there was once my ex neighbour who was staying 100m away from my house was shooting crows. He used marble as the projectile. On one instant his missed shot landed at my house and broke the window! Also just so happened I was in the room and the window was like hit by a ‘bullet’. It had a small hole with the noticeable bullet kind of mark. Thank God it missed me. Then my family complained to the neighbour and he repaired the window and stopped using the sling shot. This means actually such sling projectiles are actually rather potent. Breaking a window at 100m is not trivial. It is as powerful as a handgun.

After the victorious battle over the Philistines, the women sang to one another as they made merry. “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” Saul heard it and was very angry and jealous of David. From then on he wanted David dead and many times wanted to pin him on the wall with his spear. He even plotted for David to die in the battlefield. Sound’s familiar right? David in his weakness abused his power and also plotted the death of Uriah. Therefore, as Christians we ought to be on guard regarding jealousy as jealousy can lead to big sins.