King David of Israel

King and Prophet

The whole figure of David is important for his role in the formation of the state and monarchy of Israel. The tribes would certainly have been exterminated by neighboring peoples if they had not united in the same faith. King Saul was perhaps the first military leader capable of organizing a corps of professional soldiers: it is thought that these were marauders and David was one of them.

The king was anointed that is consecrated; he received the spirit of Yahweh to represent God among the people. His job was to save the people from invasions and to ensure justice for the poor.

David succeeded Saul who had a rigid personality and low spiritual intelligence, was attached to power and jealous of his authority. If Saul was a closed and shady man attached to his appearance and power and his story will be marked by a sad end, David, vice versa, even in difficult moments has always had a simplicity and nobility of mind.

Here are the main moments of this fight:
David said to Saul, "Let no one lose heart because of this man. Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine." Saul replied to David: "You cannot go against this Philistine and fight him: you are a boy and he has been a man of arms since his youth." But David said to Saul, "Your servant guarded his father's flock and sometimes a lion or a bear came to take a sheep from the flock. Then I would chase him, cut him down and snatch the prey from his mouth. If he turned against him. I grabbed him by the jaws, struck him and killed him. Your servant has struck down the lion and the bear. This uncircumcised Philistine will end up like them, because he insulted the hosts of the living God. " David added: "The Lord, who delivered me from the claws of the lion and the claws of the bear, will also deliver me from the hands of this Philistine." Saul replied to David, "Well, go and the Lord be with you".

Saul put his armor on David, put a bronze helmet on his head, and put the breastplate on him. Then David girded his sword over his armor, but he tried in vain to walk, because he had never tried. So David said to Saul, "I can't walk with all this, because I'm not used to it." And David got rid of it. [vv. 32-5]

David refuses the armor; he does not want to fight with the same weapons as the enemy. He totally and blindly entrusts himself to the Lord because he knows that he will deliver him.

Then he took his stick in his hand, chose five smooth pebbles from the stream and placed them in his shepherd's sack which served as his saddlebag; he again took the sling in his hand and moved towards the Philistine. The Philistine advanced approaching David; while his squire preceded him. The Philistine was looking at David, and when he saw him well, he had contempt for him, because he was a boy, with tawny hair and good looks. The Philistine cried out to David: "Am I a dog, so that you come to me with a stick?" And that Philistine cursed David in the name of his gods. Then the Philistine shouted to David: "Come forward and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and wild beasts".

David is of a beauty that the Philistine does not know. Goliath seems to represent evil and God chooses against him just a little man armed only with the beauty of faith.

David answered the Philistine, "You come to me with sword, spear and rod. I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, God of the hosts of Israel, whom you have insulted. On this very day, the Lord will make you fall into my hands. I will strike you down and take your head off your body and throw the corpses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the wild beasts; all the earth will know that there is a God in Israel. This multitude will know that the Lord does not save by means of the sword or spear, because the Lord is the arbiter of the struggle and will certainly place you in our Hands ". As soon as the Philistine moved towards David, he promptly ran to the place of the fight to meet the Philistine. David put his hand into his saddlebag, took out a stone, threw it with his sling, and struck the Philistine in the forehead. The stone stuck in his forehead and he fell face down. So David got the upper hand over the Philistine with the sling and the stone and struck and killed him, although David had no sword. David jumped and was on top of the Philistine, took his sword, drew it and killed him, then cut off his head with his. The Philistines saw that their hero was dead and fled.

Faith allowed David not to flee, as did all his people. He struggled with and for the Lord and not for him personal glory of him.

Saul, closed in his gloomy jealousy of him, cannot accept that David is loved by everyone and, in this clash, he seems to communicate what the attitude of the just man should be in the face of evil.

David with the lyre rejects the dark evil that instead torments Saul: "So when the superhuman spirit struck Saul, David took the lyre in his hand and played: Saul calmed down and felt better and the evil spirit withdrew from him". David is forced to take refuge in the desert and never dares to strike the king, the anointed one of the Lord: "Against whom has the king of Israel come out? Whom do you pursue? A dead dog, a flea. May the Lord be arbiter and judge among me and you, see and judge my cause and do me justice before you "(v. 15).

He does not take revenge, because he knows that by doing so he will conquer the divine projection for the future. He asks the Lord to do justice against Saul, who responds to good with evil: "When does anyone find his enemy and let him go his way in peace? May the Lord make you happy for what you have done to me today "(v. 20).

It will be precisely this attitude of David that makes his persecutor live in fear and conquers the hearts of all: "But you swear to me now by the Lord that you will not suppress my descendants after me and you will not cancel my name from my father's house" (v. 22). An almost unlikely request: Saul, the persecutor, asks David to save his lineage and David swears that he will be faithful to his promise.

In this we see David's true stature: he behaves in a way that goes beyond human justice. He is a shrewd man, but he has a sense of God and this makes him radically sincere and faithful.

In the second book of Samuel, from Chapter 13 to 19, a drama is described where Absalom, son of David, rebels against his father and wants to take the throne. Davide is forced to flee again ...

This is perhaps the culminating moment in David's life: he declares himself willing to die for Absalom. "Then the king was shaken by a tremor, he went upstairs to the door and wept; he said in tears:" My son! My son Absalom, my son Absalom! Had I died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son! "It was reported to Joab:" Behold, the king weeps and mourns for Absalom. "The victory on that day turned into mourning for all the people, because the people heard it said on that day: "The king is desolate because of his son." The people on that day re-entered the city stealthily, as shameful people would have done for having fled in battle. The king had covered his face and was shouting at loud voice: "My son Absalom, my son Absalom, my son!". [2 Sam 19,1-5]

David's spirit is always the same, but here it reveals itself in its fullness, in its role as "patriarch or father of an entire lineage, the same one that in the New Testament is mentioned as" royal lineage ": the Law gave to the father the right to stone his son who rebelled, but Davide already lives projected into another dimension.

These biblical passages, in their human realism, cannot leave us indifferent. They tell us that evil is overcome by good and love. This is possible for any man who chooses to love more than be loved. This is how David becomes the man of mercy, the living example of those who no longer consider anyone as his enemy. Every believer is invited to discover the presence of God even in evil, in the hostility of family members, of the closest ones. This helps us to discover that we are in the hands of God, it gives us a "poor" heart that rejects revenge and allows us to walk a long path of charitable sense of right, without letting us fall into the trap of arrogance and pretending to be justice from us.

David represents the sinner who discovers God. This is what allows him to be born again and again from his errors and to rise again from his falls. He experienced sin as humiliation and this allows him to make a double discovery: he lives in the truth before God, he knows he is a sinner and does not deserve mercy, he does not escape and does not apologize, he entrusts himself entirely to the Lord and thus experiences his mercy; secondly, humiliation gives him a humble heart. Precisely through sin lived in truth, David matures in love, he learns mercy.
br> In the Old Testament, the king was called Messiah, because with the anointing, the Spirit of Yahweh takes up residence in him. This is accomplished in a very particular way with David who is not only anointed but also chosen by God himself for an eternal covenant.

"When the king had settled in his house, and the Lord had given him respite from all his enemies around, he said to the prophet Nathan:" See, I live in a cedar house, while the ark of God stands under a tent. "Nathan replied to the king:" Go, do what you have in mind to do, because the Lord is with you. "But that same night the word of the Lord was addressed to Nathan:" Go and report to my servant David: Says the Lord: Will you build me a house, so that I live there? But I haven't lived in a house since I brought the Israelites out of Egypt until today; I went wandering under a tent, in a pavilion. As long as I walked, now here, now there, in the midst of all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of the judges, whom I had commanded to shepherd my people Israel: Why don't you build me a house of cedar?". [2 Sam 7,1-7]

David embodies the figure of the shepherd who loves his people and frees them from enemies. He must save them: "At the time when I had established the Judges over my people Israel, and I will give them rest by delivering them from all their enemies. The Lord will make you great, for he will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you will lie down with your fathers, I will secure after you the offspring that came out of your womb, and I will establish his kingdom. He will build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father and he will be to me son. If he does evil, I will chastise him with the rod of a man and with the blows that the sons of man give, but I will not withdraw my favor from him, as I have withdrawn it from Saul, whom I removed from the throne before you. Your house and your kingdom will be firm forever before me and your throne will be made stable forever "[2 Sam 7,11-16].

It is the great promise. It is the Lord himself who chooses to give David a home, a lineage forever. There are two relevant aspects of this chapter:

First: God does not want a temple, but promises a dynasty; that is, the true presence of God will not be in the temple but in the offspring. David finds himself, to be the mediator of this alliance without knowing it and without having asked for it. It is an unconditional, eternal alliance that does not depend on the fidelity of descendants. The Davidic dynasty ends in 587, with exile, and was never restored, but its fulfillment can only be in Christ.

Second: David is a shepherd. He is called to love his people, to assure them of peace, to give his life for him. God's love for Israel is manifested in his person, and this fact is recognized by the people. What announcement does Nathan's prophecy convey to us? God really wants to save his people and his love will be made visible by a new King, through whom we will know that God's love never fails.