1 Samuel16chapter 16

1 Samuel 16:1-2

The Lord ends the mourning over Saul with a fresh command: fill the horn with oil and go to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for a king is already provided among his sons. Samuel's fear that Saul will kill him if the errand becomes known is met not with a rebuke but with a plan set out step by step rather than all at once. Bethlehem is where Ruth's story closed on the name David, and the Lord now sends his prophet to that same town to find him.

1 Samuel 16:3-5

Samuel is told only what the next step requires, to call Jesse to the sacrifice and wait for the Lord to name the man on the spot. The elders of Bethlehem tremble at his coming, a small town's fear of a prophet arriving unannounced, and Samuel answers plainly that he comes peaceably to sacrifice. Jesse and his sons are sanctified for the feast, set apart in body before any of them knows why.

1 Samuel 16:6-7

Samuel looks at Eliab, the firstborn, and speaks the sentence that puts the phrase the Lord's anointed into Scripture for the first time: Surely the Lord's anointed is before him. The Lord answers at once, and the correction is the chapter's center, that man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. Saul had been chosen by the very measure Samuel is using here, taller from the shoulders upward than any of the people, and this verse marks the standard his replacement will be found by instead.

1 Samuel 16:8-10

Then Jesse called Abinadab: Abinadab and Shammah pass before Samuel next, and each is met with the same word, that the Lord hath not chosen this. Four more sons follow until seven in all have stood before the prophet, and Samuel tells Jesse plainly that the Lord has not chosen any of them. The scene repeats on purpose, so that no reader can credit what follows to birth order, appearance, or a father's favor.

1 Samuel 16:11-12

Samuel asks if these are all the sons, and Jesse admits there remains the youngest, out with the sheep and not even brought to the sacrifice. Sent for and set before Samuel, David is described as ruddy, of a beautiful countenance and goodly to look on, yet it is the Lord's word rather than his appearance that decides the matter, Arise, anoint him, for this is he. The youngest and the overlooked is named within one verse of being fetched.

1 Samuel 16:13

Samuel anoints David in the midst of his brethren, and the Spirit of the Lord comes upon him from that day forward, the same phrase Scripture used earlier of the judges and of Saul at his own anointing. Bethlehem, the town where Ruth's story ended on the name David, is where that name now receives the oil. Samuel's part is finished, and he returns to Ramah without a word of what has just been set in motion.

1 Samuel 16:14

In the very next verse the Spirit of the Lord departs from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubles him, the same breath in which David was filled. Two readings hold the hard clause together: Matthew Henry reads it as righteous judgment, God withdrawing the help Saul forsook when he forsook his duty, while Adam Clarke reads the spirit as sent or permitted by God to afflict rather than caused by him as evil in itself. Both agree the timing is no coincidence, that what is given to David in one verse is taken from Saul in the next.

1 Samuel 16:15-18

Saul's servants suggest a remedy in music, a cunning player on the harp to ease him whenever the evil spirit from God comes upon him. Saul agrees, and the servant's description of David to him already sounds like more than a shepherd, valiant, a man of war, prudent in matters, comely, and the Lord is with him. Albert Barnes notes the difficulty this creates beside chapter seventeen, where Saul later asks whose son the young man is; the usual answer is that the servant's report ran ahead of what Saul himself had yet seen proved.

1 Samuel 16:19-21

Saul sends messengers to Jesse by name, Send me David thy son, which is with the sheep, and Jesse sends bread, wine and a kid with him as a gift for the king. David stands before Saul and is loved greatly, made his armourbearer, a place at court that will matter again in chapter seventeen, when Saul does not seem to know him. The narrator gives no explanation for the gap; it stands as it is written, and the two accounts are left to be read together rather than resolved into one.

1 Samuel 16:22-23

Saul asks Jesse directly to let David remain in his service, for he hath found favour in his sight, formalizing what began as an errand. When the evil spirit comes upon Saul, David takes the harp and plays, and Saul is refreshed and well, and the evil spirit departs from him. The chapter closes with the man who will take the throne standing in the court of the man he will replace, easing the very affliction that followed the Spirit's own departure two verses earlier.