000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

36 Fourth Sunday in Lent/Year A
8:1–20, Proper 5/Year B), they persisted. Samuel anointed Saul, but,
just as Samuel warned, the monarch was disobedient and was deposed
(13:1–15a; 15:10–34). The narrator says plaintively that God was sorry for
making Saul ruler over Israel (15:34).
God tells Samuel to take a horn to the home of Jesse, grandchild of
Ruth (Propers 26/Year B and 27/Year B), who lived in Bethlehem (about
six miles south of Jerusalem), to anoint a ruler for Israel whom God had
designated from Jesse’s children (1 Sam. 16:1). Monarchs were appointed
by anointing with oil, which functioned similarly to a sacrament as an outward
sign of a deeper reality.
When Samuel feared that Saul would kill him if Saul learned the purpose
of Samuel’s mission to Bethlehem, God instructed Samuel to carry
out a ruse: the prophet was to invite Jesse to sacrifice a heifer. God would
then show Samuel whom to anoint (1 Sam. 16:2–5). The ruse raises the
question of when one can trust the word of a prophet.
Samuel reviews the children of Jesse in 1 Samuel 16:6–13. That the venerable
prophet misperceives Eliab—not only the eldest (hence the most
likely candidate) but also tall and handsome—as the new ruler should caution
readers in every age to heed God’s corrective to Samuel to look as God
does, not “on outward appearance” but “on the heart” (16:6–8).
Seven of Jesse’s children passed before Samuel (1 Sam. 16:8–10). The
youngest, however, was keeping the sheep, so that Jesse had to call him from
the field (1 Sam. 16:11–12). Shepherds stayed with the sheep, led them to
food and water, protected them from animals and thieves, tended their
injuries, and disciplined them. Because of the similarity of this role with that
of the sovereign, people in the ancient Near East sometimes referred to the
national sovereign as a shepherd. The fact that David was a shepherd was
thus prescient of his service as sovereign. The question always in the back of
the mind of the reader is the degree to which David (or any monarch) was a
faithful shepherd. Though the presence of God “came mightily” upon David
(v. 13), David did not always respond to that Spirit in an optimum way.
On the one hand, that the anointing of David takes place while Saul is
still on the throne suggests that God is often providentially active even
before others are aware of need. On the other hand, the secrecy is troubling;
it seems hardly fair to Saul for Samuel (and God) to anoint a successor
to Saul without Saul’s knowledge.
David later sometimes behaved in ungodly ways. 8 He led Israel to
heights of political achievement never equaled in Israel’s history but did
not shepherd the nation into embodying the covenantal life described in
Deuteronomy. In only a few years, the united monarchy divided into two