The Boy God Saw in the Field

After the day of the bleating sheep, Samuel went home to Ramah and could not stop grieving for King Saul.

"How long will you be sad about Saul?" the LORD asked him. "I have rejected him as king. Fill your horn with oil and go to Jesse in Bethlehem. I have chosen a king from among his sons."

Samuel's eyes went wide. "How can I go? If Saul hears about it, he will kill me!"

God told him to take a young cow and say he had come to offer it. (An old man walking a cow down the road looks like no trouble at all.)

The leaders of Bethlehem came out to meet him, shaking in their sandals. "Have you come in peace?" they asked. A surprise visit from a prophet usually meant trouble.

"In peace," said Samuel. "I have come to make an offering." He invited Jesse and his sons.

The oldest son, Eliab, stepped up first. He was tall and handsome, with shoulders as wide as a doorway. Samuel thought, Surely this is the one.

But the LORD said, "Do not look at his face or how tall he stands. I have not chosen him. People look at the outside, but the LORD looks at the heart."

Next came Abinadab. "Not him," said Samuel. Then Shammah. "Not him either." Four more brothers walked past, and still God said no.

Samuel frowned at the row of seven young men. "Are these all the sons you have?"

Jesse scratched his head. "There is still the youngest. He is out looking after the sheep."

(In a big family, the youngest gets the jobs everyone else would rather skip.)

"Send for him," said Samuel. "We will not sit down to eat until he gets here."

Everyone waited by the cooling feast while a servant ran to the hills. At last David came in, pink-cheeked from the sun, with bright eyes and grass stuck to his feet.

"Get up and anoint him," said the LORD. "This is the one."

In front of his seven big brothers, Samuel tipped the horn, and the oil ran down through David's hair. Pouring oil on someone's head showed God had chosen him to be king. The Hebrew word for a person anointed like that is messiah. From that day on, the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David with power.

Samuel went home, and David went back to his sheep.

But the Spirit of the LORD had left Saul, and a troubling spirit from the LORD terrified him. "Jesse of Bethlehem has a son who plays the harp," a servant said. "He is brave and wise, and the LORD is with him." So David came to the palace with a donkey full of gifts. Whenever the fear came over Saul, David played, and Saul felt better. (The king had no idea he was listening to the next king.)

David would grow into a great king, but his heart would go badly wrong more than once. Then the prophet Isaiah said that one day David's family would be cut down like a tree, and a new branch would grow from Jesse's stump, with the Spirit of the LORD resting on him.

A thousand years after David, a baby was born in Bethlehem, a new branch from Jesse's family. He grew up in Nazareth, where nothing about his looks made people stare. At the river Jordan the Spirit came down on him like a dove, and a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love." Back home, his neighbours said, "Isn't this just the carpenter?"

Jesus was the Messiah the oil in David's hair had pointed to all along.